There are a lot of benefits to starting out as a bird-dog. Forget the funny title - it is the best place to begin your investment career!
The pay is initially not good, but one has to decide if he or she is in the business for the long term or looking for a “get rich quick, which 99% of the time does not work?scheme? For the long term, education is invaluable in our business. Education is precisely what bird-dogging is all about. It’s like college - you pay to learn, then you earn.
?By definition, bird-dogs find motivated sellers for seasoned investors. In return they make roughly $500-$2,000, depending on the particular deal, once the investor closes on the house. Bird-dogs simply point to the boarded up, vacant, or seemingly unwanted houses and have no legal risk, do not need to know fix up costs, and need no money to place the house under contract.
The goal is to find trustworthy investors. They can be found by calling the “We Buy Houses?signs and newspaper ads. Steve Cook covers how to do this in his Wholesaling for Quick Cash course. Next, ask them where they like to buy rehab properties, then go to their goldmine areas and find houses. Bird-dogs are looking for vacant houses with unkempt yards, boarded up windows, and usually older homes. The worse condition the house is in, the better. Bird-dogs will also ask neighbors who owns the property, if they have the phone number for that person and, if no contact information is available, do whatever they can to locate the owner to see if he or she is interested in selling the property.
?When I was bird-dogging, I would show the investor the house and we would agree on the finder’s fee. Then I immediately would begin looking for the next motivated seller/house. What typically happened was the investor turned my deal down time and time again. How exasperating! It turns out that what I thought was a good deal was not a deal at all. Thus, my education progressed.
?These investors were actually mentoring me. I learned the areas, the houses, the market, the players, timing, and many other things that would have taken me months doing it on my own. I found the harder I worked and the more potential deals I brought to the investors, the more time they had to spend with me. We were now talking the same language and had the same goals in mind. It was also a time to establish trust, form business relationships, and find out which investors could close and which ones were newbies.
?When I started as a new investor, rehabbing was my chosen road to success. I encountered several new rehabbers who either quit after their first deal or have done little to nothing with the business since. Often they did not have the funds or knowledge to complete the rehab. The pressure really mounted and often left a bad taste for investing in their mouths. I, like most newbies, had stars in my eyes and a hunger in my stomach for freedom and success. In time I began to realize that building a business takes time, knowledge, perseverance, some money (a job helps here, car is a plus), and dogged determination.
By starting as a bird-dog, I got a good, quick education. I only had to bird-dog a few deals, and then moved into wholesaling once I had the ability to close the deal myself. But the benefits of the education I received as a bird-dog proved invaluable months down the road. All of the “No?responses I got from the seasoned investors in the beginning taught me what a “Yes?or a real deal was!
?Hope this helps some and may you have a profitable, fun and very long term investing career.
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