How can investors find more viable inventory in today’s hot real estate market?

Declining housing inventory levels may be providing a nice boost to home values across the U.S. but this is also making it seem harder for some investors to line up as many deals as they would like.

Publicly available housing inventory levels are now way beyond what is required for a normal, healthy and balanced real estate market. At the same time the situation is being compounded by a dramatic increase in competition in the industry as more Realtors and investors jump into the game of hunting home sellers.

To come out on top in the midst of the current fierce bidding wars over homes for sale those wholesaling homes can use transactional funding to make cash offers and close quickly, even if they don’t have great credit.

Still it is smart to find more ways to uncover deals and navigate around the competition to get better discounts too. This can include tapping into non-performing mortgage notes versus REOs, or looking to niches like marketing for probate properties and building relationships for access to the rising number of pocket listings.

Still, ambitious real estate investors can feel that they are falling short of their volume and income potential. So what’s the solution?

Those that want substantial amounts of leads and need them to flow in predictably or at least on demand can turn to pay for performance marketing in the form of third party telemarketing through outsourced call centers or PPC advertising via Google Adwords.

For those that are on ultra-tight budgets or hate writing checks for marketing regardless of the guarantee of real leads or ROI taking a guerilla marketing approach can still work well.

This doesn’t have to mean substandard results either. Hot cloud storage service DropBox is pure proof of this. DropBox launched during some of the toughest times for small businesses, went live amid a maze of other competitors, and at a time no one saw the value of cloud storage, or cared about having it. Still, they managed to accumulate many users even before going live, then rocketed to millions of customers with 18 months by focusing on word of mouth referrals and viral campaigns.

These are all tactics that can be adapted for hunting down or attracting distressed sellers for bagging more discounted deals for wholesaling homes. The potential is huge, if you really have the determination.