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When it comes to marketing for deals as a real estate investor, let's face it: things can get really expensive. In my land business, it's not uncommon to spend thousands of dollars a month just pulling property owner records—let alone the cost of skip-tracing to find their contact information.
Marketing is one of the largest expenses we face as real estate investors, and mismanaging it often leads to cash flow constraints and financial stress.
This can be incredibly frustrating because we need to spend money on marketing to get deals, but if a campaign doesn't yield enough deals or yields inventory with minimal profit margins, we can lose money quickly! In other words, the difference between profitability and breaking even (or worse, losing money) usually comes down to our marketing costs.
What if there was a way to change this? What if you could access as many leads as you want, complete with their phone numbers and email addresses—for only $99 a month?
Enter DealMachine!
Introducing: DealMachine
DealMachine is a mobile app that streamlines a deal acquisition strategy called “driving for dollars.”
When investors drive for dollars, they canvass neighborhoods for distressed properties by identifying signs like peeling paint, bad roofs, tall grass, or broken windows. Once a distressed property is found, DealMachine allows users to take a picture and automatically send a personalized postcard or letter to the owner to initiate a conversation about selling.
Though this remains one of its most impressive features, DealMachine has now grown far beyond just streamlining driving for dollars. These days, DealMachine offers a full suite of resources that are unmatched in value.
How DealMachine Has Evolved
Beyond its driving for dollars capabilities, DealMachine is a full-fledged data service provider, direct mail servicer, and property record management (PRM) system.
Here's where things get impressive: DealMachine also offers unlimited skip-tracing for all users. If you sign up for their Starter plan at $99 a month, you will effectively have all the leads (complete with phone numbers and email addresses) you could ever want.
For context, last year, my land business spent an average of $3–5K a month on skip-tracing alone. DealMachine’s unlimited skip tracing for this price is simply unheard of in this space and may have just changed the skip tracing game forever. You could say that it’s as disruptive as Airbnb for short-term rentals or Uber for transportation.
But first, some of you may be wondering, “What is skip-tracing exactly?” Let's address that.
What Is Skip-Tracing?
Strictly speaking, “skip-tracing” refers to a technique for locating a person's whereabouts for various purposes, such as debt collection or police work.
In real estate investing, the term is generally used more loosely. It most often describes a method for finding owner contact information, such as phone numbers and email addresses, using the address of an associated property. The address used can be that of the subject property, the property the owner cited in the county records as their mailing address, or another associated property like a rental or vacation home.
(Now, back to DealMachine.)
DealMachine's Unlimited Skip-Tracing
In short, DealMachine provides real estate investors unlimited leads, complete with owner contact information, for only $99 a month.
Now, this statement is a tad oversimplified, but that about sums it up nicely.
“But, Jaren,” you say, “how exactly do I use DealMachine? And what makes it so dang useful?”
Let's say you're just starting in real estate or operating with limited working capital. Since you’re new, you probably can't afford conventional marketing channels like direct mail, mass outbound SMS, or ringless voicemail drops.
However, using DealMachine, you'd gain access to all the leads you want. Want to start cold-calling them immediately? Go right ahead.
This approach essentially brings down marketing costs to only $99 a month. I cannot overemphasize how significant this is. In fact, for those hungry for success but dealing with limited working capital—this may exactly be the break you've been looking for.
DealMachine Pricing Tiers
Now, there are some caveats on how unlimited DealMachine's skip-tracing really is. As they say—“terms and conditions apply.”
First off, when it comes to skip-tracing, users have access to unlimited skip-tracing as long as the leads stay within the DealMachine platform. However, shipping skip-traced data outside of DealMachine has a monthly limit.
If you're considering skip-tracing through DealMachine and then using that data for an outside platform, such as Launch Control for mass texting, Sly Broadcast for voicemail drops, or a preferred alternative PRM such as PebbleREI, DealMachine’s monthly export limit is worth considering.
Below is a summary of DealMachine's tiers of service:
- Starter
- $99 a month
- Up to 10,000 leads
- 10,000 lead exports per month
- 10,000 List Builder leads per month
- Pro
- $149 a month
- Up to 50,000 leads
- 30,000 lead exports per month
- 30,000 List Builder leads per month
- Team
- $499 a month
- Up to 500,000 leads
- 100,000 lead exports per month
- 100,000 List Builder leads per month
For a comprehensive overview of all features and their corresponding pricing, see this page.
Making the Case for Unlimited Leads
As you can see above, DealMachine limits each service tier's total number of leads. For example, the Starter plan allows up to 10,000 leads only.
Some may wonder, “But I thought I could have unlimited leads? 10,000 doesn’t sound very unlimited to me.”
Allow me to make my case:
Despite the total lead limit per service tier, DealMachine has no limit on deleting old leads. This means you can continually manage your leads by deleting older, inactive ones (often organized in related “Smart Lists” under DealMachine's Leads section) and then pulling new ones as needed.
As long as you organize and maintain clear distinctions between actively managed leads and others, you can effectively have a continuous stream of new leads to work with.
Technically, lead limitations are assigned per tier of service. But practically speaking, leads are unlimited as long as you stay organized and do some housekeeping.
Some Notes When Using DealMachine
DealMachine has some additional nuances concerning vacant land parcels worth noting.
First, DealMachine used to require a full postal address to skip-trace records imported from alternative data service providers like PropStream and DataTree. This makes our job hard because many vacant land parcels don't even have a complete address.
When we pull a marketing list for vacant land, half the time we don't even know the city or zip code of our subject property, let alone the full address!
In response, DealMachine recently updated the platform, allowing skip-tracing based on the Assessor's Parcel Number (APN). While you still need the zip code of the subject property (as of this writing), this update is still a significant step forward.
Unfortunately, a bottleneck remains because, as mentioned, when we pull vacant land data, zip codes are often missing.
Second, I also found that DealMachine's skip-trace results were less accurate when using imported data pulled from alternative data service providers.
For land investors who want to take advantage of DealMachine's unlimited skip-tracing, it's best to pull your marketing list natively within the DealMachine platform and not import property records from alternative data service providers. From my experience, this ensures the highest data accuracy and the most efficient user experience.
Also, it's worth noting that when you pull marketing lists within DealMachine, a full postal address and/or zip code (or the lack thereof) seem irrelevant. It's only consequential when using DealMachine to skip-trace imported data.
A Note on Skip-Tracing Accuracy
Allow me this opportunity to temper your expectations, especially regarding the accuracy of skip-traced data. Not every property record attempted to be skip-traced within DealMachine will successfully return phone numbers and emails.
And for the records that do return contact information successfully, a significant portion may not be accurate or functional.
This is not a negative reflection on DealMachine; rather, it's the nature of all skip-traced data. Regardless of the source, whether it's DealMachine, PropStream, Versium, DirectSkip, or another skip-tracer, at best, only 50–70% of skip-traced contact data will be accurate.
Tailor your strategy with this in mind.
A Video Guide to DealMachine
For a comprehensive walkthrough on how to best use Deal Machine as a land investor, check out the video above.
It covers:
- Pulling a list of vacant landowners
- An overview of DealMachine's property record management (PRM) features, property records, and contact records
- How to increase seller conversion potential by selecting niche ownership demographics
- How to filter lists and export records
- Basic list scrubbing
And much more!
Don't Skip DealMachine
DealMachine has completely revolutionized the game for real estate investors, especially beginners or those with limited working capital.
Limited capital is no longer a roadblock to getting deals! Thanks to DealMachine, for less than $100 a month, you now have access to an abundance of leads that you can immediately start cold-calling, if nothing else.
That’s one more obstacle out of the way, so what are you waiting for? It's time to take action!
Best of luck!
