Earn Money Being a Real Estate Bird Dog

Get Started in Real Estate Without Money or Credit

The easiest way to get involved in real estate is being a bird dog for another investor. You don’t need any money, credit or significant experience in real estate to get your feet wet. The first step to earning some extra money is finding an established real estate investor to work with. Put an ad on Craigslist or call all those “We Buy Houses” and “Stop Foreclosure” signs you see. On Craigslist you can talk about wanting to get started with an investor, finding potential deals. Calling the phone numbers from the signs will take a little more time, but talking to the investor directly will get a relationship started more quickly.

The pay for your efforts as a bird dog is dependent on the individual investor and bird dog. Some investors only pay for leads they end up buying, but as a bird dog, you should do your best to get a few dollars for every property you present. A typical agreement might be $5-10 for every property submitted meeting the guidelines and $500-1000 for every deal they close.

Now, the actual service you’re providing in return for compensation. You will need to acquire some or all of this information for potential investment properties: picture of the house, address of property, bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, lot size, age of home, asking price (if for sale currently), mortgage balance, owner’s name, phone number and the owner’s address (if different from property address). Different investors will require different amounts of information for a property information sheet to be considered “complete.” The skill is to know what properties are good candidates for a real estate investment. Houses that look abandoned or otherwise neglected, houses that need repairs, owners that “need” to move, houses with a good amount of available equity and houses in the foreclosure process are a good place to start. Driving through or “farming” neighborhoods around your own residence will be the best first step. Identify houses that fit the above criteria, take a few pictures, jot down the address and head back to the house.