My wife and I started buying SFH in 2008 when the market started to collapse. Several of those we paid cash. We are white and around 60. We do not flip. Our strategy was to focus on ranch homes in desirous neighborhoods (schools with rankings of 8 or greater on a scale of 10). I have a property manager. Since the advent of Airbnb we furnished and totally renovated four of the homes.
My point is this. Don’t try to pigeon hole real estate investors. There are as many strategies as there are investors.
However I do agree that anything in the mail is targeted for a homeowner who is over their skis financially or lacks the time, money and know how to renovate their home to get top dollar.
I stopped buying in 2014 because the prices got too high.
Here is one way it works:
You have a buyer who is flush with cash but has no English skills and limited official identity. You have a seller with a house. What you need is someone in the middle to make the magic happen.
I worked for a woman who owned a Chinese restaurant. She was charging apartment rates for a bedroom in a house she owned. If the worker balked, he got sent back home to Taiwan in disgrace. She kept the employees poor so they couldn’t afford to open their own place.