BANDIT SIGNS

General Real Estate Investing
1

I’ve put out some bandit signs that say “We Buy Houses”. I receive a variety of calls, competitors, fsbo’s who want too much $, houses that are listed,people that just WANT to sell or are thinking of selling, some who are just curious, and a few that NEED to sell. I’m thinking of switching the next order of signs to “STOP FORECLOSURE”, in order to better target those home owners in preforeclosure. Has anyone had better results with one message or the other? Pete

2

that really depends on what your goals are. if you want to focus exclusively on foreclosures obviously ‘stop foreclosure’ is a better message buy you might miss out on some motivated sellers who are not in foreclosure. of course the generic “we buy houses” message is good buy you’ll get a lot of junk calls like you mentioned. there’s really no right or wrong. there’s what’s right for you.

3

Don’t worry about getting the people you don’t want to stop calling you, you need to hone your screening skills and figure out exactly how to get the answers you need efficiently and be thanking them for their time and hanging up within a minute or so if they aren’t motivated. Allow me to use an example someone else had regarding lease purchases, I know it won’t apply to your situation exactly but it will show you how you can potentially hone your skills in weeding out callers quickly:

Hate to say it, Russell, but everybody does it their own way and you need to find the approach that works for you. You can do it any of the ways you listed, none are necessarily better than any other.

So I can’t tell you what YOU should do. I can only tell you what I do.

I like to get right to the make-or-break questions and get off the phone with unmotivated sellers ASAP. I don’t ask anything about the house unless I don’t have the basic details necessary to determine the value. At this point (on the initial phone call) I don’t care if it has mature peach trees in the back or what color the appliances in the kitchen are. I also don’t ask about the finances because it has zero impact on my offer. My offer is based solely on market value.

I’m only really interested in a few things:

  1. Are they the owner? (if not, no point talking any further)
  2. Are they willing to rent the house out?
  3. Are they willing to sell it at the end of the lease for today’s price?
  4. When do they want to sign?

Notice that each of these questions depends on the one before it. If they’re not the owner then I don’t ask about renting. And obviously if they don’t want to rent it or sell it at the end of the lease, I don’t ask when they want to get started

Until now I’ve usually negotiated the price and payments on the initial call if everything else is a go. But I’ve put together a pre-appointment package that I’m about the start testing. The idea is to drop it off or email it to them the week of the appointment. It covers everything from my past experience to the terms of the offer. It’s main purpose though is to get the contract into their hands so they can look it over and talk to their lawyer if they need to, BEFORE I waste my time driving over there.

I know it’s a risk that the seller might take my contract and try to do a deal themselves. But at this point I’m not really worried about that since I’m targeting expired listings rather than intrepid FSBOs.