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How to Find Cash Buyers (Cracking the Code)

by | Lead Generation & Nurturing, Strategies, Targeting & Demographics

how to find cash buyers

Cash buyers in real estate are like a breath of fresh, cool air on a sweltering summer day. 

They can breeze into your life and whisk away your property faster than you say “sold!” 

For wholesale investors but also real estate agents, they can be ideal clients to make swift, secure transactions.

They don’t need loans or mortgage companies and are thus less likely to cause delays during a real estate transaction. 

However, you may have a billion-dollar question: How do you find these elusive creatures or generate cash buyer leads? 

This is where my today’s article comes in, covering…

  • What cash buyers are and why they are important
  • How to find cash buyers or rather generate cash buyer leads
  • For Available Marketing Channels to “Find” real estate cash buyers
  • Using tools to find cash buyers to market to
  • How to find cash buyers on Zillow
  • How to find cash buyers on Propstream
  • How to find cash buyers on Propwire

Sounds intriguing? Then let’s get going… 

 

What Are Cash Buyers and Why Are They Important 

Cash buyers are essential to wholesale real estate investors, but as a realtor, you can also benefit from them. 

They are usually individuals or entities who purchased real estate with cash in the past. 

Many are typically rehabbers, renovators, or wholesalers with access to funds or private funding to buy properties without going the traditional route of conventional financing (e.g., bank loans, etc.).

This means once a good real estate deal comes along and the due diligence (e.g., title work) is done, they can close quickly.

Other benefits of working with cash buyers are the following:

Deals involving cash buyers are less likely to fall through. 

Why?

Buyers dependent on financing can run into obstacles such as failed financing contingency, low appraisals, or changes in their financial situation that might lead to deal cancellations. 

Cash deals are not subject to such conditions and are thus more reliable.

Transactions with cash buyers generally require less paperwork because no lenders are involved. 

This can make the transaction process smoother and more straightforward.

Cash buyers appeal to sellers, giving realtors a competitive edge when presenting offers. 

A cash offer can often sway a seller to accept a lower amount due to the surety and speed of the transaction.

If a property has issues that might make it hard to sell to a buyer who needs financing (usually involves an inspection), a cash buyer might be willing to purchase ‘as is.’ (especially if they are fixer-upper investors) 

This can allow you as a realtor to move difficult-to-sell properties.

Cash buyers often buy multiple properties over time, especially if they are investors. 

Building relationships with these buyers can lead to repeat business and potential referrals.

 

Why Are Cash Buyers Important to Wholesale Real Estate Investors?

Cash buyers are essential for wholesalers that cannot purchase good deals with their cash reserves or follow a creative real estate investing strategy (e.g., deal assignments).

Therefore, many wholesalers need to build a database of cash buyers.

Once they have the right deal under contract, they can partner with or assign the contract to one of the cash buyers.

In this context, the controversy of assigning contracts without a real estate license often exists, which I won’t explore in this article. 

This topic is very often not well-seen or not understood by realtors.

Different strategies and methods are available to build a list of cash buyers, which I will discuss in the following section. 

 

How to Find Cash Buyers or Generate Cash Buyer Leads

I hate to break it to you, but you don’t simply find cash buyers like you may find a coin on the street. 

“Finding” them is a bit more proactive than that, so I would prefer to call it generating cash buyer leads.

And the strategic approach doesn’t differ much from generating buyer leads in general, as I discussed in this article, or generating real estate leads in general. 

However, what differs and informs the ideal marketing channels is that you can better “laser target” a specific audience (cash buyers) with a high awareness level.

The latter means these lead types are pretty close to a real estate transaction, unlike some potential buyers who may consider buying a house in one to two years.

The second difference is the marketing message, or sales copy you must use to persuade and convert them. 

Then there are individual constraints you have to consider to generate cash buyer leads…

One of these constraints my “Real Estate Lead Gen Strategy and Performance Suite” uses to determine viable real estate marketing channels to use, besides many other variables, is how many (cash buyer) leads you must generate per month to reach your annual income goal.

As a side note: the advantage with cash buyers is that once you have a larger list of them, you won’t have to generate new ones as long as you nurture this list. 

This is provided they are real estate investors wanting to extend their portfolio and thus continually buy new properties.

Other constraints you have to consider before even thinking about starting with some of the tactics often mentioned in other articles about “finding cash buyers” are the following:

  • Your annual net income goal (e.g., net commission, profits, etc.)
  • The time when you want to have reached this goal (short-term, mid-term, or long-term goal)
  • Your income tax rate
  • If you are a realtor, your brokerage commission split
  • Your gross commission
  • The average property/ home value of listings suitable for cash buyers
  • Your average lead-to-closing rate (e.g., your sales skills)
  • Your monthly budget for lead generation
  • How much time can you make per day (“sweat equity”) for time-consuming but free marketing channels
  • The time you could outsource lead generation tasks
  • The time cost of outsourceable time

Depending on the marketing channel, you may have to consider more constraints (e.g., your skill level per marketing channel). So you can imagine that this can get a bit complex quickly. 

Because of this dynamic complexity and this only being a simple article that can’t be tailored to your situation, including constraints, I will only focus on cash buyer lead generation methods and marketing channels available; however not necessarily viable for your situation. 

For example, if you have almost no budget and time to invest in a method that may be “free” but cost you time (that’s just one scenario), you create a goal conflict based on your constraints.

Another example would be wanting to reach your income goal within a year but having a low monthly budget, so you may be left with real estate content marketing, which can take a year or more until it gets you results. Here you have another goal conflict.

 

Four Available Marketing Channels to “Find” Real Estate Cash Buyers

how to find cash buyers

The real estate lead generation game and the different marketing channels you can use are not as complicated as they may sound sometimes.

Why? 

There are only four avenues, each with its own subsets, as discussed in my article “How to Generate Real Estate Leads Without Getting Lost.”

Where relevant and suitable, I tailored the subsets to the case of “finding” real estate cash buyers.

1) Outbound Real Estate Lead Generation (paid and “free”) 

Digital:

Offline:

2) Real Estate Lead Generation via Database Marketing (Ideally When You Already Have Cash buyers in Your Database)

  • Email marketing
  • Past client direct mailing
  • Past client marketing
  • Past client retargeting via ads on search and social media
  • Sphere of influence marketing

3) Inbound Real Estate Lead Generation (paid and “free”)

Digital:

  • Content marketing on your website (publishing blog articles, videos, downloadable whitepapers, free giveaways, etc.)
  • Content marketing on social media (posting on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc.)
  • Answering questions on social media, forums, Quora, etc.
  • Lead magnets (often combined with email marketing and nurturing campaigns)
  • On-page SEO
  • Webinars (with strategic partners)
  • Guest-posting (however, not Google’s favorite anymore)

Offline:

  • Publishing content in larger publication channels (local and national newspapers, magazines, etc.)
  • Organizing a housewarming party
  • Organizing an open house event
  • Organizing educational events
  • Joining local real estate investing associations

 

4) Real Estate Referral Marketing for Lead Generation

 

Using Tools to Find Cash Buyers to Market To  

Some may consider using tools scraping the contact information of potential cash buyers as lead generation, which it actually is not. 

Why? 

Because these contacts are not yet interested in doing business with you, they are just contacts with a particular likelihood of being your ideal target audience (cash buyers).

The contacts you can find with the help of these tools you can later use with some of the earlier mentioned marketing channels.

Which tools are there?

It’s Zillow, Propstream, and Propwire.

 

How to Find Cash Buyers on Zillow

First, you won’t find Cash Buyers directly on Zillow, presented on a silver platter. 

But, at the same time, you can find hints of cash buyers with the help of Zillow.

Let’s say you want to find cash buyers in a specific area. 

You can now go to Zillow’s search bar and enter the address or location of your target neighborhood.

You should select only properties for rent and filter out all houses, townhouses, and apartments for sale.

The result left should be only houses for rent. 

The next filter you apply is the pricing filter. Select only lower-range rents.

 

Targeting and Contacting Landlords/Owners

Who will most likely offer houses for rent in the lower price ranges?

There is a high chance that a certain percentage of these owners or landlords may be investors. 

And if they are, there are also chances they are looking for another investment property.

The point where Zillow fails is finding the contact information of this owner directly. 

Sometimes, once you have the address, you can find it on RedFin, but it’s not guaranteed.

A better approach with a higher success rate would be to go to the county records and get the owner’s contact information. 

You may also get lucky using the PropStream software I covered in this article.

Once you have the contact information, you can call them, email them, start a direct mailing campaign with yellow letters, or use other marketing channels (see earlier).

If you can collect enough phone numbers, you could even run a Facebook campaign with a custom audience by importing the phone numbers and creating lookalike audiences. 

You can read about real estate Facebook marketing in this longer article.

The copy on the yellow letter you send out as a wholesaler could read as follows (keep in mind that we want to draw attention, so it might sound a bit exaggerated): 

“I desperately need to sell my property at 123 Main Street. I had it on the market for some time, but I am at the end of my patience and can’t wait any longer. 

I need this thing sold two weeks ago. Please text me or give me a call at 123 1234 123.”

If they are cash buyers, they will know what you are doing, but they might call you nevertheless.

There are chances that they are not looking for another deal right now. Still, they may be interested soon if you have one near their property. 

This is because they prefer to invest in an area they already have over going into another neighborhood.

 

Targeting/Contacting Realtors

One roadblock you could run into is that you may not directly find the buyers with the above method. But you may discover realtors who know who the buyers are.

Finding the right realtors depends on the type of property.

To find the right realtors, you want to look – or filter – only houses on the lower end of prices (fixer uppers, shack-type homes).

Realtors that list these types of homes (usually newer agents) are more likely and more prepared to work with wholesale investors and may know other investors/cash buyers.

Now, you can contact these agents.

Another way to find cash buyers is to filter properties on Zillow that have been sold in the last six months and had a price under $100,000.

The next step would be to find the realtor representing the seller and the buyer. 

Again, this contact information is usually not available on Zillow, but you can sometimes find it on Google.

This research will be easier if you have a real estate license. 

Besides the legal benefits, this is one reason why having a real estate license as a real estate investor is beneficial.

So, provided you have a real estate license, you can now find out who the listing agent and buyer’s agent was.

Now, you can contact the buyer’s agent and mention that you saw they recently sold someone a house on 123 Main Street.

You can then say you have a similar property that their client might be interested in.

You can also ask if they would know anybody else who might be interested in it.

From my experience as a realtor, you need to know that your commission is secured (that’s what pays the bills in the end). 

So therefore, it is better to approach the realtor, saying she can represent you (in this case, the wholesaler) for both sides of the commission.

Still, you would need to include the commission in the price.

Using this approach, you can have realtors bring you cash buyers.

But also make sure you can directly contact these cash buyers after the deals they are involved in are done.

This depends on your contract with the realtor and if some client protection is in place.

If you are allowed to do that, you can use these cash buyers to build your list.

 

How to Find Cash Buyers on Propstream?

With Propstream, you don’t have to take an indirect approach like on Zillow.

Why?

Because you can filter them with its search filter directly.

While logged in, you just go to your market, navigate the search filter, and select “Cash Buyers” from a dropdown list.

Because you can filter them

Next, shift your attention to property characteristics and identify the precise type of buyer you’re looking for. 

Begin with classifications – pick ‘residential’ for a residential buyer, ‘commercial’ for a commercial buyer, or select both options if necessary.

Once the classification is done, proceed to the property types dropdown menu and specify the property type that suits your classification.  

Having selected your classification and property type, consider using other property characteristics, such as the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and potentially even the Year Built.

With your property characteristics set, move on to ‘ownership info.’ 

Here, you can refine your search based on the type of owner you require, be it an individual buyer, a corporate entity, or perhaps a trust acquiring properties.

Additionally, as PropStream’s extensive records date back several years, limiting the last sale date might be necessary.

Another useful feature is the ‘Number of Properties Owned’ filter, which allows you to locate a buyer with multiple properties.  

 

How to Find Cash Buyers on Propwire

Finding cash buyers on Propwire is as straightforward as with Propstream.

The company also offers a nationwide database of off-market and MLS properties, and you can apply different search filters.

You can find investors who paid all cash for houses or landlords who want to buy additional properties in your local market.

This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.

Tobias Schnellbacher
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