Buying Off-Market Houses in Canada Without Data Lists

Buying off-market houses in Canada means giving up the one thing US wholesalers build their whole acquisition engine on: cheap, filterable property data. There is no equivalent pipeline of pre-foreclosure, behind-on-mortgage or absentee-owner lists to pull from, so Canadian operators run the model in reverse — generate inbound demand with advertising and search, then blanket-mail by neighborhood characteristics rather than by distress signal.

Aaron Moore has run that model full-time out of Toronto since 2008 through GTA House Buyers. His stack is Google Ads, SEO, Facebook, YouTube, untargeted direct mail, and as of this year, TV. He has four outside salespeople and a third inside rep coming on.

This article covers the channel mix that replaces a list, how to position a cash offer against the MLS when you’re openly not the highest price, how Aaron staffs and retains acquisitions, and how he uses private lending to close deals institutional lenders reject.

From the Real Estate Pros Show

This article draws on an interview with Aaron Moore of GTA House Buyers on the Real Estate Pros Show, hosted by Issa Hanna.

Why the US Data Playbook Doesn’t Transfer to Canada

In the US, nearly every off-market acquisition strategy starts with a filter. Pull pre-foreclosure filings, pull owners behind on their mortgage, pull absentee owners with 20 years of tenure, skip trace, dial. The list is the product. Canada doesn’t have that layer.

“In the U.S., they’re more data heavy than we are,” Aaron says. “They can buy a lot of data — pre-foreclosure, people heading into foreclosure, people behind on their mortgages. We don’t have a lot of access to data here.”

That’s a structural constraint, not a research problem you can solve with a better vendor. And it changes the shape of the business in two ways.

First, you can’t start with the seller and work toward contact. You have to start with contact and work toward the seller — meaning your marketing has to reach a wide audience and let the motivated ones self-identify. Second, your cost per lead math works differently. US operators optimise response rate on a pre-qualified list. Canadian operators optimise reach and conversion on an unqualified one.

The honest framing matters here. Aaron doesn’t pretend he’s found a workaround: “I wish I could target better, but I do what I can do. It’s what I have.” He rates his own marketing an eight out of ten and names the data side as exactly where the remaining two points sit.

If you’re building in a Canadian market, budget and staff for that reality from the start. Volume of inbound conversations replaces precision of outbound targeting, which means more marketing spend per deal and more inside sales capacity to triage what comes in.

The Channel Mix That Replaces a Targeted List

With no list to pull, the entire acquisition engine becomes demand generation. Aaron runs the marketing seat himself, and the stack is deliberately broad:

• Google Ads — capturing sellers already searching to sell fast
• SEO — heavy investment in ranking organically, and increasingly in showing up inside AI search results
• Facebook ads — top-of-funnel reach to people not yet searching
• YouTube ads
• TV — a brand-new channel for the company, with first commercials launching
• Direct mail — untargeted, at volume

The search piece does a lot of work. “If you search for us on the internet, you’re probably going to find us,” Aaron says. When you can’t go find the distressed seller, you need to be unmissable the moment they decide to look.

The mail strategy is where the Canadian constraint shows most clearly. Rather than mailing a distress list, the company blanket-mails whole neighborhoods chosen on proxies: older housing stock, which correlates with fixer-uppers, and areas where owners have likely held for a long time. “It’s not targeted, but it still works.”

That logic isn’t Canada-specific. Host Issa Hanna mentioned dropping 250 postcards into an older Austin neighborhood for the same reason — the age of the stock is itself a filter when you can’t buy a better one. Any US investor who has watched list prices climb and response rates fall can run the same play.

The practical implication: judge untargeted mail on cost per deal across a sustained campaign, not on response rate from a single drop. The per-piece response will look poor against a US distress list. The cost per piece is also lower, and the leads are warmer than a cold dial because the seller raised their hand.

I wish I could target better, but I do what I can do. It’s what I have.

— Aaron Moore, GTA House Buyers

Positioning Against the Retail Market, Not Competing With It

The single most useful reframe Aaron offers is that a cash-buying company is not competing with real estate agents at all. “We’re not really competing with realtors much. We’re for a small group of home sellers that really don’t want to sell with a realtor, or they have circumstances that don’t permit the time.”

That narrows the target and sharpens the pitch. You are not trying to beat an agent’s net proceeds. You are serving sellers for whom the retail process is the problem — fixer-uppers they can’t afford to prep, timeline crunches, financial hardship, a life event that makes months of showings impossible.

In a slow market, the retail timeline is the argument. Clean up, renovate, list, show, and wait for a buyer to actually close — Aaron puts that at several months in current Toronto conditions. Against that, a fast close with no repairs and no showings is a different product, not a worse price on the same one.

Which is why he states the tradeoff out loud rather than dancing around it:

We’re the easy button of real estate. And no, we’re not going to pay the highest prices. The highest prices go for people that sell on the open market — they take the time to renovate and keep it clean and do all the showings. That’s how you get the highest prices.

Saying this early does two things. It filters out sellers who were never going to transact off-market, saving your acquisitions team the follow-up cycles. And it builds credibility with the ones who stay, because you’ve just told them the thing most cash buyers hide. Sellers who have already talked to three “we buy houses” companies notice.

Staffing Acquisitions Around Inbound Leads

An inbound-first model lives or dies on who answers the phone and who sits at the kitchen table. GTA House Buyers is currently scaling both sides of that.

On the outside sales team — internally called home buying specialists — the company recently went from three to four after one departure and two hires. Aaron describes four outside reps as “a new level for us.” A third inside salesperson was close to being hired at the time of the interview.

The more useful detail is what he says is actually capping growth. Asked what single fix would change his business overnight, he didn’t name leads, marketing budget or capital. He named leadership depth.

Specifically, two things: a director of people development, hired to own that function rather than bolting it onto an existing role, and senior reps on both the inside and outside teams who function as role models. There’s already a sales manager doing training. What’s missing is the next layer.

“We need more people who are like the role model — this is the person who’s got our system, the sales, they know their business, have it down pat, and really can take new people under their wing, train them, get compensated well for it.”

Note the compensation point. He isn’t asking top performers to train juniors as a favour; he’s building a paid role out of it. That’s the difference between a training culture that survives a busy quarter and one that doesn’t.

If you’re running four or more acquisitions reps and your close rate is inconsistent across them, the bottleneck is almost certainly here. More leads into an untrained rep produces more burned leads, not more deals.

Funding Culture: The 1% Giving Fund and the Key Purpose Indicator

GTA House Buyers commits a mandatory 1% of revenue — in practice between 1% and 2% — to two giving funds, split evenly. Half goes to a team real estate fund, half to a community fund that largely serves sellers. Deployment is tracked as a Key Purpose Indicator, reported alongside conventional KPIs.

The team fund lets employees draw capital to buy property. People on the team have used it to buy a first home, a rental, or a flip. One team member, Tobias, drew $17,000 toward buying his own home — his second draw, after using it a year earlier for a rental. Several people have used it once, a couple have used it twice.

Think about what that does to retention in an industry with notorious acquisitions turnover. A rep learning to buy houses all day now has a funded path to buying his own, inside the company, using skills he’s developing on the job.

The seller side is discretionary and rep-authorized, which is the part worth copying. Danny, an outside salesperson, was at a senior woman’s house in Toronto during a snowstorm. He noticed her hand was cold while bandaging a cut, then realised the house was cold and her furnace had been out for days. He used the giving fund to get an HVAC technician out that night, around 8 or 9 p.m. The team also arranged a ride to get her home from the mall where she’d been staying warm, because the walk took her over 20 minutes.

They never bought the house. It wasn’t a deal. Aaron is direct that this still pays: it helps land deals, generates reviews, and builds reputation. But the authorization sits with the rep, not with him.

Private Lending as a Backstop for Deals Institutional Lenders Reject

Aaron also runs a private lending side, mostly serving investors who buy properties from his company. The company works with partner lenders, but he personally funds the deals those lenders won’t touch.

The example he gives is a rural Ontario property. Their main private lender declined it — rural properties sit outside the box for a lot of institutional-style lenders, who apply the same rules regardless of how good the specific deal is. Aaron funded it himself to make the transaction happen.

Two things make this work at the economics he’s comfortable with.

First, the leverage is conservative. “If I’m lending at 90%, 100% of value, that might be a different story. I’m talking about conservative, like 70% to 80% loan,” he says. That band is the risk control that lets him move on deals others reject.

Second, the underwriting is already done. When he lends on a property his own company has sourced and analysed, there’s no diligence lag. “When I’m lending on one of our deals, it’s quick, fast — we’ve already looked at it, we’ve already underwritten it.”

That’s a real structural edge for any operator with both an acquisition arm and capital. The deal was underwritten once, for the buy, and that work carries into the loan decision. A third-party lender has to start from zero and charges time for it.

His stated goal is to line up more capital partners who can make quick decisions and lend safely “without so many of these rules that, if it doesn’t fit this rule, they won’t look at it.” If you hold capital and want flow in Ontario, that’s the gap he’s naming.

Frequently asked questions

Can Canadian investors buy pre-foreclosure or distressed-owner lists the way US investors do?

No. Aaron is explicit that US operators are “more data heavy” — they can purchase pre-foreclosure, foreclosure-pending and mortgage-delinquency data at scale, while Canadian investors have far less access to that kind of property-level information.

The practical consequence is that Canadian acquisition runs inbound-first. Instead of filtering for motivated sellers and reaching out, you advertise broadly and let motivated sellers identify themselves. Budget for higher marketing spend per deal and more inside sales capacity to qualify unfiltered inbound volume.

Does untargeted direct mail still work if you can’t filter by seller distress?

Yes, at volume. GTA House Buyers blanket-mails entire neighborhoods selected on proxies — older housing stock more likely to contain fixer-uppers, and areas where owners have probably held for a long time. Aaron’s assessment: “It’s not targeted, but it still works.”

Judge it on cost per deal across a sustained campaign rather than response rate on one drop. Per-piece response will be lower than a US distress list, but the per-piece cost is lower too, and the leads that come back raised their own hand.

How do you explain to an off-market seller that you won’t pay top dollar?

Say it plainly, early, and pair it with what you do offer. Aaron’s version: the highest prices go to sellers who renovate, clean up, list on the open market and sit through showings — that’s how you get top dollar, and a cash buyer isn’t going to match it.

What you sell instead is speed and certainty. In a slow market where the retail path takes several months from cleanup through closing, a fast close with no repairs and no showings is a different product. Leading with the tradeoff filters out sellers who were never going to transact off-market and earns trust with the ones who stay.

What loan-to-value does a private lender use on deals institutional lenders turn down?

Aaron lends in the 70% to 80% loan-to-value range and explicitly rules out 90% to 100%. The conservative leverage is what makes it workable to say yes on property types — rural Ontario deals, in his example — that partner lenders and institutional sources decline on category alone.

His second advantage is that the deal is already underwritten. Lending on a property his own company sourced and analysed means no second diligence cycle, which is where most of the speed comes from.

How much revenue should a house-buying company set aside for a team and seller giving fund?

GTA House Buyers commits a mandatory 1% of revenue, which in practice runs between 1% and 2%, split evenly between a team real estate fund and a seller and community fund. The company tracks deployment as a Key Purpose Indicator alongside standard KPIs so it gets reported, not forgotten.

The amount matters less than the structure. Making it mandatory, measuring it, and authorizing frontline reps to deploy the seller portion without escalation is what turns it into a retention and reputation asset rather than an occasional donation.

The bottom line

If you’re acquiring in a market without purchasable seller data, stop looking for the list and start building the funnel — search visibility, paid advertising across several channels, and consistent blanket mail into older neighborhoods — then make sure you have trained people ready to answer it, because inbound volume without acquisition depth just burns leads faster.