What is List Stacking? How to Find Highly Motivated Sellers

Heard of listing stacking? 

Wondering what it is and how real estate investors use it to find and target more motivated sellers? 

Then you’re in the right place. In this guide, we’ll explain what list stacking is and how you can do it. We’ll also address the problem with list stacking that no one seems to be talking about. 

Let’s get into it. 

What Is List Stacking?

List stacking is when real estate investors narrow their data to include multiple qualifications (ex: absentee + vacant) in order to find and target more motivated sellers. 

Traditionally, a real estate investor would pull several or all of the following lists for a specific area — check out this video to learn how to pull data from Listsource.

• Vacant
• Tax Delinquent
• Inherited Property
• Code Violations

… and send marketing campaigns to each. 

With list stacking, you’d instead send marketing campaigns to people who fit multiple qualifications like the following (these are examples)...

• Absentee & Vacant
• Absentee & Tax Delinquent
• Absentee & Vacant & Tax Delinquent & Inherited Property

This results in fewer records… but the people on those new lists are more likely to be motivated sellers because they fit a lot of the criteria. 

That’s why list stacking results in more deals with fewer marketing dollars — it’s laser targeted. 

And you can get as detailed or as broad as you want with your list stacking efforts. Here are a few more examples of high-performing list combinations…

Absentee Homeowners

High Equity: Owners with 50%+ equity. 

Absentee: The owner isn’t living in the property. 

Inherited Property

High Equity: Owners with 50%+ equity.

Inherited: The owner inherited the property recently. 

Vacant: No one is living in the property.

Tax Delinquent: The property is behind on taxes, indicating that the new owner might feel burdened by the inheritance. 

Empty Nesters

High Equity: Owners with 50%+ equity.

Single Family Residence Only

Non-Absentee Only

Occupied Only

Owner Age: 45-64 years old

Length of Residence: 5+ years

People in Household: 2 persons

Adults in Household: 2 Adults

Check out our help center to learn how to add lists to REISift.

If you’ve got good list stacking software, then you can get as granular as you want. The more detailed you go, the less records you’ll uncover… but the more likely each of those records will be to turn into deals. 

How Does List Stacking Benefit Real Estate Investors? 

List stacking benefits real estate investors because it results in more targeted marketing campaigns. 

Practically, “more targeted” means you spend less money on marketing but get more high-quality leads and close more high-profit deals. 

Want to try it out for yourself? 

Read the warning below first.  

The Problem With List Stacking That NO ONE Talks About...

Yes. 

The value of list stacking is that you can dig deeper into your data to create more targeted marketing campaigns — which means you can spend less money and do more deals. 

But there’s a problem. 

What happens after the first time you create a hyper targeted marketing campaign?

Answer: things get ugly. 

Do you keep track of every dead lead? Wrong numbers? What about every person who’s told you to stop contacting them? Heck — do you even track the people you’ve sent mailers to, cold called, texted… and how many times you’ve contacted each one of them? 

Do you completely understand your data? 

Because if you don’t…

… then list stacking is going to make it a whole hell of a lot worse. 

In some counties, not keeping track of your data can now even get you a $1,000 fine or 6 months in jail, as Ryan Dossey points out in the Facebook post below… 

But even if you’re in a county where that’s not the case, you’re still going to waste tons of money marketing to the wrong people over and over again if you don’t diligently track your marketing campaigns so that you know…

• Who you’ve contacted
• When you contacted them
• How you contacted them
• Who told you to stop contacting them
• Who never responded

If you’re going to run more than just one marketing campaign, then you need to have easy access to all of that information. 

It’s not just about list stacking…

… it’s about understanding your lists. 

That way, you can build a systematic and successful real estate investing business. Don’t just go looking for cheap list stacking software… look for software that will help you clean your data, track your marketing campaigns, build automated workflows, and yes… list stack. 

Enter REISift… 

The Best List Stacking Software For Real Estate Investors

REISift is built specifically for real estate investors trying to manage and grow their businesses. 

Our software includes… 

• Skip Tracing
• List Stacking & Management
• Automate Workflows
• Send Direct Mail
• CRM for Real Estate Investors
• Run USPS Vacancy Check & Absentee Filtering
• Advanced Filtering For Targeted Marketing
• Advanced Integrations & Zapier
• Advanced Data Cleansing

… and tons more. 

Plus, our community is awesome and we’re constantly adding new features. 

Check out the video below to see for yourself… 

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Sure… you could go find some cheap list stacking software and then get lost within your own data in just a few months.

Or you could build a business.

REISift will help you with the latter. Here’s some social proof from one of our awesome members…

“REISift keeps all my hard work organized in an easy to use, convenient, & real working platform. You never have to worry about tracking down that phone number or seeing if you “think” they might be the same person as someone you just spoke with. It really helps prioritize so you execute & find the deals sooner!” - Dylan Schapansky, Central Florida

We’ve got a 7-day free trial for you. But before you do that, we highly recommend you go through our 14 Day Auto Lead Gen Challenge — it’s a game changer for both new and seasoned investors.

And if you’re looking for some freebies to help manage your data, check out our…

• Data Flow Process Map
• Sensei Flow

How to Stack Lists For More Targeted Marketing Campaigns

Good good. 

So how do you do it? 

Here are the steps. 

Step 1. Download & Clean Data

First thing’s first. 

You’ve got to purchase some real estate data and clean it. 

(ListSource is probably the best and easiest place to buy real estate data)

Choose what lists you want to pull and download them. 

• High Equity
• Tax Delinquent
• Inherited Property
• Code Violations

If you’re going to clean them yourself (not recommended), then you can throw them in a spreadsheet and spend the rest of your life sorting through data. 

Watch the video below to learn how to do that… 

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Step 2. Pick Software 

OR…

If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life sorting through data, you can get yourself a free trial of REISift and we’ll do it for you. 

Just upload your list…

… and we’ll walk you through the steps to cleaning and organizing your data so it’s so easy even a toddler could do it. 

Then, as mentioned previously, you can use our software to list stack — our advanced filters allow you to get as targeted or as broad as you want, track your marketing campaigns and records, send direct mail, and ultimately… own and understand your data. 

We’re the only software in the real estate investing world that allows you to do all of that in one place.

Lucky for you, we’re also passionate about helping our members, creating a user-friendly experience, and providing new features for no additional cost. 

We’re the best.

Oh. And yes. 

This section is titled, “Pick Software”, and the only option we’re giving you is REISift…

Get over it. 

Step 3. Choose Your Stack

Here’s the part you’ve been waiting for. 

List stacking. 

Choose the specific lists you want to stack. 

I’ll copy and paste the lists we talked about earlier — these are a decent place to start.

Absentee Homeowners

High Equity: Owners with 50%+ equity. 

Absentee: The owner isn’t living in the property. 

Vacant: The property isn’t occupied, which means the owner is having to cover mortgage payments. 

Inherited Property

High Equity: Owners with 50%+ equity.

Inherited: The owner inherited the property recently. 

Vacant: No one is living in the property.

Tax Delinquent: The property is behind on taxes, indicating that the new owner might feel burdened by the inheritance. 

Empty Nesters

High Equity: Owners with 50%+ equity.

Single Family Residence Only

Non-Absentee Only

Occupied Only

Owner Age: 45-64 years old

Length of Residence: 5+ years

People in Household: 2 persons

Adults in Household: 2 Adults

Step 4. Run Three Marketing Cycles & Optimize

Now we’re going to reach out to those list-stacked records. 

But first, here are some don'ts to keep in mind… 

• Do not give up on your data after sending only one direct mail campaign. 
• Do not send direct mail to wrong addresses or to people who have clearly expressed no interest. 
• Do not keep spending money to pull more data to make up for poorly managing your previous data. 

That’s how many investors operate — and they pay for it. 

Because it’s a massive waste of money. 

We recommend taking your data through three marketing cycles — this process includes skip tracing, direct mailing, cold calling, and text messaging. 

You milk your data, send a targeted marketing campaign, track the results (DNC, not interested, leads, wrong number), update your data, and then run it all again through a new marketing campaign.

Maybe that sounds confusing. 

It’s not. But it does require more explanation to fully understand. Join our Go-No-Go Challenge to fully understand how this marketing process works. 

Step 5. Be Consistent

Rome wasn’t built in a day. 

Hell — it wasn’t even built in 6 months. 

Building and scaling your business is the same. Maybe not the same as building an ancient civilization in medieval times…

But it’s going to take time. 

And consistent action produces consistent results. So pull data, market, keep your processes squeaky clean, track your results, and keep doing what works (ditch what doesn’t). 

That’s the process. 

You’re in it. 

Final Thoughts on List Stacking

Our final thoughts are as follows. 

List stacking is powerful for real estate investors who want to run more targeted marketing campaigns. 

The problem is that list stacking only leads to more clutter (and lost time and money) if you don’t start by owning and understanding your data. 

REISift makes it easy for real estate investors to own and understand their data — as well as track marketing campaigns, manage client relationships, automate internal workflows, send direct mail… and yes, even list stack. 

If you’re serious about scaling your business, then REISift is the solution. 

You can get a free trial by clicking here. Or if that commitment is too intense right now, go here to get free training of our software.