Reply to What's the best way to find a house before it goes on the market?

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[quote=Steve][quote=Anonymous]It would be great to avoid a realtor and competition from other buyers if possible, wouldn't it?

What's the best way to find someone who is preparing to sell, but hasn't yet listed...neighborhood listserv? asking on dcum?

We're looking in N Arlington, which I know is a hot area, but I see houses in the sales records all the time that were never listed on the market.  How does one find these gems?  [/quote]

Since the obvious stuff was covered (sending letters, checking listservs, asking neighbors), I'll tell you about my own experience: My wife and I had the same issue - ready to buy with a specific area and home type in mind but stuck waiting due to lack of inventory. I ended up getting creative: 1) walked the neighborhoods and talked to neighbors; 2) researched tax records to see who might be interested in selling. These efforts were decently successful but extremely effort intensive, so I got the idea to build Knockity so that homeowners could search for buyers, especially pre-market.

We've had a very high level of success for pre-market homes for one of our users. We worked very closely with Hannah to send out her buyer profile to about 200 homes near a specific school. (Buyer profile: [url]http://hannah.knockity.com[/url]). Building up a marketplace is hard and we knew that people weren't just going to start visiting our site randomly. We had to bring our website to the homeowners. We sent out letters and hung door tags to reach these (mostly older) homeowners and were surprised at the success rate! Hannah has seen 9+ homes directly from owners, pre-market. She may even be buying one of them.

From this effort we've learned even more and are in the middle of revamping our site to build something more sustainable and that is helpful to both the regular consumer as well as the real estate agents that support them. In the meanwhile, if you want any tips/insight from my personal experiences and observations, feel free to reach out.[/quote]

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