Dwayne,
The methods to find deals are only limited by your imagination, time and budget.
All the methods you mentioned will work. I actually wrote a book last fall outlining 52 different killer marketing strategies to find great real estate deals. Topics covered there range from free and easy to hard and expensive (and HIGHLY effective).
But to answer your question, most of the folks I know who are doing significant volume use a combined approach to marketing. After visiting with several of the HomeVestors franchisees from around the country, the bulk of their leads come from broadcast marketing (radio, TV, movies, Internet, billboards - in that order). Locally, MAAAAANY investors are using print (Robin sent me a birddog lead an hour ago from one of his ads), bandit signs (fast, cheap, sort of effective -- and HIGHLY illegal), as well as car signs, all saying something like "I Buy Houses," - just to name a few.
Personally, most of my deals come from direct mail. There are TOOOOONS of online "scraping services" that sell marginally effective lists CHEAP. I don't recommend those to my students. While the list itself is cheap to acquire, the printing is expensive and you'll have to do a lot more of it than if you'd bought a good list to begin with ("quantity vs. quality").
There are much better "intelligent lists" available at very reasonable costs. The best intelligently computer generated list I know of is
Robin Carriger's list. His prices are close to the scrapers', but he personally slices and dices the data on a per-customer basis, applying his decade+ wholesaling expertise to the databases results. In addition, I think Robin also gives first time list buyers a copy of his postcard template.
What I do for my marketing is take the process one step farther and use human-generated leads lists. Computers are FAST!, but they cannot beat a human's decision making ability when doing research. The best service I know of for this is
Searchable Sellers. This is service I created for myself and now I make available to some of my DFWREICLUB friends (just like Robin did with his "motivated sellers' list").
I got tired of wasting big bucks on "shotgun" lists, so I started paying people to track down AND THEN VERIFY the information on my motivated seller lists. Where a scraper's list might have 20,000 leads, Robin's probably has no more than 5,000 to 10,000 leads that are more qualified. The lists I use typically have less than 500 leads per list, but they are HIGHLY qualified and contain data machine generated lists cannot provide. This allows me to custom-tailor my marketing and create multiple-contact-per-homeowner-campaigns, instead of single or double mailings.
While my per-lead marketing costs are high compared to other investors I know (how much does it cost to get my post card in front of someone for 3-10 seconds), my per-purchase costs (how much does it cost me in marketing for each house I buy, flip, etc.) are some of the lowest I've ever heard of.
Depending on what county you are in and what your budget is, you can buy / create your own lists quickly, easily and fairly inexpensively. Once you have those, then it's just a matter of getting your marketing in the mail. You can literally buy a list today and have your phone ringing tomorrow or the next day.
If you need specific help with any of this, let me know. Am happy to share.
-Greg
Greg Wilson
The REI Mentor
