What Is a Vacant House?

April 9th, 2021

Vacant houses are excellent leads for wholesalers and flippers. Learn the ins and outs of vacant houses in this article….

Owners still have to pay taxes, insurance, etc on vacant houses. For that reason, they are motivated to sell at a discount to get rid of the headache. That represents an opportunity for flippers (like you). In this article, you’ll learn what vacant houses are, how to find them, and how to flip them for profit.

What is a Vacant House?

Vacant houses are properties that are not occupied and contain no personal property. To be considered vacant, they must not have beds, furniture or anything that could make it livable.

Why would someone leave a house vacant?

The house may have been inherited and the new owner was too busy to sell it. Or, the owner may have multiple properties and one fell into neglect. Or, life happened (job loss, disease, etc) and the owner had to abandon the house. These are just a few of the many reasons why a house may be vacant.

How do I find vacant houses?

One way is to drive around and look at houses in your neighborhood. Vacant houses are easy to spot because the lawns are often overgrown, or papers and fliers are stuck in the doors. This method is called “driving for dollars” (and it works) but it’s very time-consuming! Another way to find vacant houses is to make friends with your mail carrier. Most mail carriers can tell you exactly where all the vacant houses are on their route. This is faster than driving for dollars, but you have to be friendly with a lot of mail carriers to get leads.

Better than both those methods, is to subscribe to Jerry Norton’s software called Flipster. If you haven’t heard of Flipster, it’s a cloud based software that helps you organize and automate all the steps to wholesaling and flipping houses. It also comes with millions of motivated seller leads in the US, including vacant houses. To learn more, CLICK HERE.

Video Tip:

Watch this YouTube video where Jerry Norton shares his tips for finding vacant houses.

Now that I’ve found a vacant house, what do I do?

First, you have to track down the seller. There are a few ways to go about this. You can knock on doors and ask the neighbors if they know anything about the seller. They are often happy to help because they want the eye sore gone. Or, you can check public tax records to get the owner’s name and address (but you will still have to track down their contact information).

Instead, the best way (again) is to subscribe to Jerry Norton’s Flipster software, which includes phone numbers and emails for vacant house leads! Click here to learn more about Flipster.

Once you have the vacant homeowner’s info, it’s time to contact them. Calling sellers can be intimidating, so a script is an essential tool to ease your jitters. Click here for a free Motivated Seller Script which tells you exactly what to say when talking to sellers.

Then, once you have the house under contract, fix it up and resell it, or flip it to a cash buyer for a $5,000 to $10,000 wholesale fee!

To recap, here are the 5 steps to flipping vacant houses.

5 Steps to Flipping Vacant Houses

  1. Locate a vacant house
  2. Find the seller
  3. Get the house under contract
  4. Flip it to a cash buyer (or fix it up)
  5. Collect your check