First lead in NJ

General Real Estate Investing
1

Hey guys, bear with me. I put out about 2500 flyers in an area that feel at ease with and a lady sent me this E-mail:

Hi
I received an insert with my newspaper about you. Please provide some info. Do you have a website? I need more info before moving forward. All I know is you buy houses. (I have one I need to get rid of)

Thanks, Cindy

The flyer was the basic “We buy houses, any area or condition”.
I don’t have a web site, but I don’t think I need one right now, even though it probably would give me some credibility.

What do I do next. Sorry, I’m a real estate appraiser, but this is my first flirt with finding motivated sellers.

Thanks for all the help.

2

Hey Dave,

Good for you for taking action by putting out so many flyers!!!

Now, call her up and build rapport. Ask questions to try to get to her motivation. If she asks you what you do you can tell her that you help homeowners who need to sell by buying homes quickly and (assuming you can) tell her that you can often settle within a few days…

I’ll send you PM.

Chris

3

The first thing you do is work on your ANSWERS to the questions anyone selling a home will have. He’s my list…Sellers questions followed by my answers…

Are you a Realtor, how does this work???

NO, I am NOT a realtor…I BUY homes, I don’t TRY to sell them for people. The difference between what I do and what a realtor does is very simple. If you list your home with a realtor and a pipe bursts…YOU PAY FOR IT…If the home fails an inspection…YOU PAY FOR THE REPAIR…If it needs paint, a roof, a furnace…YOU PAY FOR IT…IF…( and that’s a BIG if in todays market) the realtor can sell the property…YOU THEN PAY THE REALTOR THOUSANDS of dollars AFTER you’ve SPENT thousands of dollars!!!
I don’t work that way…I WILL BUY YOUR HOUSE TODAY!!! That’s the difference.

How does this work???

My goal is to make selling this home as EASY for YOU as possible. All homes are purchased AS IS. That means YOU FIX NOTHING…NOTHING. We also handle the clean out. Take what you want from the home and just LEAVE everything else. WE can set up a time RIGHT NOW for me to look at the house. I’ll have a sales agreement with me, if we can agree on a price, you sign and we set a closing date and YOU ARE DONE!!
Oh, we LOVE houses that need work, as a matter of fact, this is our speciality. Don’t be embarrased by the condition of the property. I GUARANTEE that your home is NO WHERE NEAR as bad as some of the ones I’ve purchased.

How soon can we close???

We can close in as little as 5 days. I’ll give you my Attorneys business card, he’ll call you THAT DAY and schedule the closing. I have a ONE PAGE sales agreement that states I am buying the home AS IS, with any and all defects, known and unknown. You can’t get easier than that. Sign here____________________________.

I have a piano in the house that I want to keep but I have no where to store it, how will that work??

NO problem…we deal with this stuff all the time. I have a special agreement with a self storage facility (MINE) that gives my customers special rates. I’ll have the piano move there for you at NO CHARGE, you just have to pay the monthly storage until you can make room for it in your new place. (They NEVER make room for this stuff so my self storage gets a new customer)

Make sure you are LAID BACK and EASY GOING with these callers. The SOFT SELL is the single greatest technique in the world. DO NOT PUSH these people. Let your competition do that. I always take my time with callers, tell them how nice the neighborhood is that the home is in.
Ask about the condition, and BE POSITIVE. The single biggest mistake I see my competition making is they pick a home apart when they go to look at it. If you do this YOU are SCREWED. Point out things that need attention but do it in a postive way. You want them to be thinking about all the money the house needs, but you don’t want to INSULT them.

Then CLOSE THE DEAL like this…

“This house has a lot of potential. It needs a lot of work, but we can save it!! This is obviously a business, I wish I could offer you more, but when all the repairs are added up along with the other costs, I need to be at $XX,XXX inorder to make this work. I know that’s propbably less than you wanted, but think about it for a minute. YOUR DONE!! PAID IN FULL next week. You don’ have to deal with what I’m going to deal with…HOME INSPECTORS, REALTORS, BUYERS who CAN NOT get a MORTGAGE, a FALLING real estate market, and things that just GO WRONG like pipes bursting, vandalism, septic systems that fail, ect, ect. You sign this paper…YOU GET YOUR MONEY and YOUR DONE with it!!!”

PLANT THE SEED.

4

You guys are great, thanks for the help. I’ll get right on it and keep you updated. I’m ready to go. DAVE

5

Hey Dave,

When people say things We as investors must listen. What if you did have a Web business, that would cost about the same as putting out 2500 flyers. Your energy is great but if you pour it into a certain bottle think how much more effective it could be put in the right place. I would investigate some audio multimedia Web engines if I where you. Try to find something that will give you instant credibility, find and follow leads, and make sure you do the research and it is affordable. Some back door tricks to see if the site builders are reputable is email them and see how fast they get back to you. Ask to talk to some one before you sign on. go for a week or two with emails about the system and see if they stay with you. Make sure you cut them off a few times when they talk and you will be able to see if it is a script or not. Send them all a seperate email, one for all you give your email to, and see if their follow up campaign is selling more than one other product or webinar in a months time…this is very bad, it means they just want money.

The right web engine will add alot to your sucess, but research and find the right one.

Make it a great day

Lou

6

Thanks Lou, that’s great advise. I have seen some of the web sites and they look great, but I don’t even know what I’m doing yet, so I’ll start small and hope to have to get one quick. Thanks for the advise on testing them to see if they follow up with thier clients. DAVE

7

So GoodShowDave - have you called her yet? It probably has been more than 24 hours since she contacted you. If you haven’t called her yet I suggest you stop reading this and call her now - fdjake gave some good tips.

And don’t worry too much. You will probably say things you shouldn’t say, and don’t say things you should say. This is all part of learning. Once you do your first, you will feel more confident… :O)

Good luck.

8

Dave, I think you should have had a plan to act on the responses to the flyers BEFORE you sent them out. You have to have the education and resources to get the deal done before you advertise that you can. This way you’re not scrambling around to get things together. Good luck. :biggrin

9

I haven’t called her because she contacted me via E-mail that was on my flyer. I don’t have anything except what I posted with her E-mail, so I hope she’s not just testing the water. I’ll post when I get a response from what I sent her. This is a copy of the E-mail.

We help people, like yourself who “want to or need to get rid of a house”. It’s easier to help you if we know a little about the situation, where the house is, what kind of condition it’s in, what you’d like to get from the house. Then we can help by finding the solution that works for you and that works for us. There are plenty of ways to help people with the houses they don’t want and we want to make it easy for you. If you could let me know a little about the house and why you’d like to sell it, that would make it easier for us to give you a few options on how we can help. Thanks again for reaching out to us, let me know as soon as you can so we can start working together. Thanks. DAVE

I hope I was encouraging enough to have her E-mail me back, I hope I wasn’t too hokey.

10

Thanks for the advise Phlemboy, I have been studying the three Legrand systems for almost a year now and also the Short Sale system he has. I felt I was ready to start looking for houses, so instead of waiting for all the lights to be green, like me, I just went ahead and did SOMETHING! Sorry about not explaining that when I started this. I just want to make sure I don’t let a good one get away by getting some real world advise, but I’m sure it’s all part of the learning process. I’ve put up posts before about possibly finding a mentor in my area, but I haven’t had much luck. Thanks again to everyone for your advise and comments, I’ll keep you posted as to what develops. DAVE

11

OK guys, here is what Cindy wrote back to me:

Hi Dave,
It’s a condo in West Palm Beach, Florida. Originally bought for a rental income. Reason to sell, we don’t want it anymore. Difficult to manage business down there when both of us work full time in NJ… Name of the development is Presidential Golfview on N. Congress Blvd, in West Palm Beach.

Cindy

What am I supposed to do now? I don’t know anything about that area. Is there someone who can take this off my hands for a little education? Thanks. DAVE

12

You need numbers to know what you can even propose to do. Seems like condos in FL aren’t the way to go right now because everyone is figuring this same thing out at the same time. If she’s serious about selling, she’ll give you an idea of what she wants or has to have from it. You can get online and see if there’s anything like it on the market. Call some local Realtors. Get some opinions of what it’s worth in today’s market. Kinda take an average of what you hear from several different ones and see how that compares to where Cindy is on it.
Are you advertising for things out of town or is this in an area of your town you don’t know much about?

13

I was just advertising locally for houses in that area, I guess this is what I asked for. I don’t know if I have the know-how to get this one going, but if someone who does houses in FL, you can have the contact info. Just keep me in the loop so I can learn something. Thanks. DAVE

14

Unless she bought that condo in 1999 or earlier… RUN, don’t walk away!!! She’s BURIED in it, just like every other “investor” that bought into the pre-construction BS down there.

15

Thanks FDJake, I’ll let her know that I don’t do out of state stuff. Still looking. Thanks to everyone for your help. DAVE

16

GoodShowDave - your response to her email was pretty good. I liked it. I believe it worked because she sent you a response.

I wouldn’t work an out-of-state deal at this point. I am just starting out. I believe you are doing the right thing.

Keep us posted. Good luck!

17

Thanks again for the info and the encouragement. I may try to see if I can find someone in FL that my want to work this deal and keep me in the loop so I can at least learn something from it, or possibly earn a finders fee. DAVE