Bidding and Budgeting in Need To Sell My House Fast

Looking for leads as a real estate wholesaler or property flipper?

Finding off-market deals can take a ton of work. And cost a pretty penny, especially in the beginning when you’re still refining your sales funnel. 

You can set up direct mail campaigns, send out ringless voicemails and emails, even SMS messages. Just don’t expect results overnight — it sometimes takes a while to assess the success and ROI on your marketing campaigns. 

While you start building out your own marketing campaigns, you can get out of the gate by simply buying real estate leads. REsimpli founder Sharad Mehta has had success with NeedToSellMyHouseFast.com; here’s how it works.

What Is NeedToSellMyHouseFast.com?

The company has invested heavily to attract inbound leads in all 50 states, through a combination of online and offline marketing channels. Distressed or otherwise motivated sellers reach out to them when they need to sell in a hurry. 

So, they have continual deal flow, as property owners contact them about selling. You can buy these leads in any state or county — but so can your competitors. 

To determine which investors get which leads, NeedToSellMyHouseFast.com uses an auction system. 

How Bidding & Budgeting Works

When you open an account, you select which states and counties you’d like to bid in.

You bid a certain amount for leads in your target county, up to a certain budget limit. When the highest bidder hits the ceiling of their budget, the platform stops feeding them leads and starts feeding them to the next highest bidder. It works similarly to pay-per-click (PPC) ads in that sense. 

For example, say you bid $250 per lead, while two of your competitors each bid $300 and $225 respectively. Competitor A set a budget limit of $1,200, so the first four leads that month go to them for $300 per lead. The platform then starts shunting leads to you at $250 per lead. If you set a budget limit of $1,250, you get the next five leads before hitting your own ceiling. Then Competitor B starts receiving the next leads for $225 apiece — if there are any leads left by that point in the month. 

Simple enough, right? Where it gets slightly more complicated is that investors can return leads for a credit, if those leads don’t meet the standards set by NeedToSellMyHouseFast.com. Read the full return policy for a breakdown of which leads you can return for a credit.

In the event of a return, you don’t get a refund in dollars. You get a credit to spend on your next lead as a replacement for the “faulty” lead. 

Measure KPIs Across Your Marketing Funnel

A closed deal could earn you tens of thousands of dollars. But when each lead could cost you hundreds, you need to minimize wasted leads and maximize your conversion rate. 

In the typical marketing funnel for real estate wholesalers and flippers, you successfully conduct appointments with a certain percentage of your leads, and then actually close on an even smaller percentage of them. 

Start tracking these percentages. How many leads do you go through for each appointment? How many appointments do you have to schedule for each offer you make? What percentage of your offers result in a signed contract?

Over time, work on improving your conversion rate at each narrowing of the funnel. The higher the percentage of leads you can schedule as (kept) appointments, the more offers you’re likely to make. The more offers you make, the more deals you’ll close. 

Marketing ROI

All of these key performance indicators boil down to one crucial metric: the return on investment (ROI) you earn on each marketing channel. In this case, that means your ROI on buying leads through NeedToSellMyHouseFast.com.

For every dollar you spend on leads, how much do you earn from closed deals? If you earn $10 for every one dollar spent buying leads from NeedToSellMyHouseFast.com, you know you have a profitable marketing strategy. 

If you only earn $2 for every dollar spent, your other expenses might dwindle your net profit to zero or even negative. 

Is It Worth Buying Leads from NeedToSellMyHouseFast.com?

Only you know the answer to that question, based on the return you see on each marketing dollar spent. 

Bear in mind that a competitor with a more streamlined sales funnel might earn a profit on these leads, while you struggle to break even on them. Or vice versa: by optimizing every touch point in your sales funnel and follow-up machine, you might earn a tidy profit on these leads while your competitors don’t. 

Start with low bids and a small budget to start experimenting with NeedToSellMyHouseFast.com. Lead costs vary by market, but make sure you buy enough leads to get a decent sample size. 

Put every lead under the microscope to analyze the quality of the leads. You may find these leads highly motivated, or more tire kickers than serious sellers.

The only way to find out if the platform delivers in your market is to experiment with it yourself.