When starting out in real estate investing, the first thing you realize that in order to make money you need to have access to motivated seller leads. All homes that are for sale are not motivated sellers. In fact, most sellers are not motivated by an investor's standard. All sellers are motivated to sell, but the type of homeowners that investor's look for are the ones that need to sell or else they may lose their homes, and not the sellers that put their homes on the market without caring whether their home sells or not.
There are quite a few circumstances that can cause an owner to become a motivated seller. Below is a list of situations that would likely cause people to be motivated sellers;
Divorce: A divorce could cause person to become motivated to sell their house because they probably can't afford the house on their own, or they might not want to be reminded of the person that they are trying move on from.
Job Transfer: Homeowners that are relocating because of their job would most likely cause them become motivated mainly because they usually don't want to make double payments on two houses.
Foreclosure: Anybody faces with losing their home due to being in default on their mortgage will start to look for ways to sell their home since they don't want to have a foreclosure on their credit report.
The different situations named above can cause a person to become highly motivated to sell their home and people's motivation level changes as different things happen in their lives. One owner that doesn't care if their house sell one week can get a phone that changes their motivation completely and causes them to become highly motivated.
There are at least 15 potential causes to put someone in a position to become a motivated seller and those owners need someone to help them out of their situation.