Are You Using Bandit Signs to Generate Motivated Seller Leads?

July 7, 2009 | By | 7 Replies More

Bandit signs could be a great way to get your phone ringing off the hook with motivated sellers. It was for me when I got started investing in real estate.

My mentor taught me early on that one of the most important parts of being a real estate investor was to get sellers contacting you to sell you their property.

So, I knew the next step was to put together a marketing plan.

Here’s what it looked like:

1) Get business cards made

2) Join local real estate investment association

3) Place “We Buy Houses” ad in local newspaper

4) Buy “We Buy Houses” bandit signs

5) Knock on doors of people facing foreclosure

We thought bandit signs were a good choice because they were relatively inexpensive and there didn’t seem to be too many other investors using them.

With my students, I typically recommend at least testing bandit signs when getting started. The barrier to entry is pretty low, like I just mentioned, and with any form of marketing, it’s all about testing. Even if there are tons of investors using them in your area, you may still want to test them.

I thought I would share some examples of bandit signs and tell you my thoughts on them . . .

Bandit Signs for Real Estate Investing

We Buy Houses Bandit Signs

This is a pretty standard “We Buy Houses” bandit sign. Notice that they used a local phone number. We tested both a local and toll free number and found that the local number pulled a better response rate.

Bandit Signs Subject To

Here’s an example of one that’s geared towards buying the property subject to and uses a toll free number. As you will see in a moment, we have used the same yellow background with black text on our signs.

Real Estate Bandit Signs

This bandit sign is interesting because it uses a vanity phone number, (888) ISoldKwik, and it has the same name as the domain . . . which is good for branding.

This makes their contact information much easier to remember thus increasing the likelihood that someone will call it. Remember though, with every marketing method, you must test your results to find out pulls the best response rate.

Stop Foreclosure Bandit Signs

Instead of going with the “We Buy Houses” slogan, this bandit sign is targeted directly to people facing foreclosure. Some people that are in foreclosure may be more likely to call a “Stop Foreclosure” sign than a “We Buy Houses” sign. This could be a good way to differentiate yourself in your market if there are a lot of other investors using “We Buy Houses” Signs.

We Buy Houses Bandit Signs

And here’s a picture of one of our bandit signs. (sorry the picture is a little blurry)

Ours is the one on top. You can see we used the standard “We Buy Houses” slogan, yellow background with black text, and employed our own local vanity # (345-SELL) and domain (http://www.345SELL.com).

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  1. Patrick,

    I really enjoyed your post on bandit signs. I personally have used bandit banners, but I need to improve my locations! High traffic, but speed limits were too fast.

    Anyways, hope all is well…
    -Dave

  2. Reese says:

    Patrick,

    I love your bandit signs, I’m just starting out and plan to use this technique myself. You’ve given me some great examples. I think your awsome.

    Thanks,
    Reese

  3. Patrick Riddle says:

    Dave… glad you enjoyed. Yeah, I’ve made the same mistake on roads where speed limits were too fast.

    Reese… that’s great that you plan on using bandit signs yourself. They definitely work!

    If I can help w/ any further questions, lemme know.

    ~ P-Rid

  4. David says:

    I am making my signs right now :)
    I purchased 18*24 white coroplast on eBay for .99 cents each. I just spray painted them yellow and am using a thick sharpie magnum. Next is placing them :) wish me luck! Patrick I am writing avoid foreclosure on some of them. Are these sellers that I could potentially do a lease option and use their existing financing

  5. Rob Kumengi says:

    Great information Patrick! We use bandit signs all the time….do you have any sign companies that you would recommend or suggest that are relatively cheap??

    We have the best luck with bright BLANK yellow bandit signs…and we use a permanent marker to write out our marketing. (apparently the sloppier the handwriting the better it works)

    • patrickriddle says:

      Thanks Rob. Good to hear from you :-)

      I’m not sure how this company compares to others… but it’s who I use… http://ezsigns.net/

      Yeah, hand written signs work really well. Nice!

      – Patrick