…MY AREA HAS OVER 780 PRE -FORECLOSURES LISTED, 240 OF WHICH ARE FINAL JUDGMENTS. I HAVE FOUND ONLY 12 OF THESE PROPERTIES LISTED WITH REALTORS. 6 OF THE PROPERTIES LISTED WITH REALTORS WERE SOLD HOURS BEFORE I COULD VIEW THEM AND THE OTHER SIX WERE JUST HEADACHES. I GUESS THE NEXT OPTION IS TO DO A BLANKET MAILING TO THE HOMEOWNERS WHO DO NOT HAVE REALTORS LISTING THEIR HOMES. I WANTED TO GET A COST EFFECTIVE IDEA TO REACH THE HOMEOWNERS. I HAVE SEEN MANY GREAT IDEAS HERE AND I LIKE THE PERSONAL TOUCH THING, BUT THERE’S TOO MANY TO HAND WRITE AND MULTIPLE MAILINGS CAN GET EXPENSIVE. ANY IDEAS?? SHOULD I DO RESEARCH TO NARROW LIST DOWN OR WOULD THAT BE JUST SPINNING WHEELS…NEW AT THIS AND NEED DIRECTION…HELP!!!
Most cost effective way is cold calling from your home phone. Do a reverse look up of the address on the white pages like whitepages.com or metacrawler. Don’t be surprised if you only find working numbers for half the people.
Mailing will not be cheap. You have to to stand out from the bankruptcy lawyers, refinancing lenders, and the regular junk mail. Handwritten is “ok”. I actually got better results from a typed letter. I now realize that handwritten is not that special, unless you have at least a month’s time to build a relationship with them. There are other people sending handwritten letters also. The easy way to do it. You can mass produce it. You place a sheet of white paper over your yellow legal pad. Follow the lines as you write it with a black felt tip pen. Then take the yellow legal pad paper cut it, and put it in the copy machine, and run copies of the white original. Just run 1 or two at first to make sure it’s even. It’s important to use good quality legal paper, not too thin, or it will jam the copier. Do not use generic 16 LB paper from Office Depot. Then fill in all the copies with the first name. Use the same pen, on the #10 white envelope, turn the stamp slightly askew. It makes it look more personal. I have also had success with a professional printer, but they were willing to work with me on this custom job.
Remember, it’s better to send to 200 people 5 times, than to 1,000 people once. Stick to loans that are at least 5-6 years old in the median price range or lower.
Charley,
Just a tip. If you post in ALL CAPS, you are considered to be YELLING!!!
Da Wiz
…thanks for the great idea…will start working on this today. I’m hoping for 2-4% response. Is that a good expectation? Any tips on what to say when I do get calls?
As far as the caps…it was late and my eyes were crossed…didn’t realize caps lock was on till end of post…maybe I was subconsciously yelling for bed
I’ll get it right…eventually
You may want to rubber stamp them in red ink “personal and confidential” and just address it to the first name. You should be able to find these at Office Depot. It peaks the curiosity.
As for results, well, I get a 3-5% response on a window envelope mailing and a 0% return on other campaigns, but I don’t do window envelopes like everybody else does them. I have heard a 0.5% response is good for foreclosures. It depends alot on how much time you have to market. If you mail to every person that has no equity, you will get a high response. If you mail to the people with mortgages that are at least 5-10 years old, you should expect about 0.5-1% response. Most of my calls usually come in the last 2 weeks before the auction, we have only 21 days public notice until the auction.
If you only get a notice 21 days before the auction like Georgia or Texas, they will be slammed hard in that time period especially in the first week. They will be slammed by bankruptcy attorneys, investors, and maybe even credit repair companies. You could send 3 different mailings with the same address on the same day and they wouldn’t know it’s from the same person. You shouldn’t just do letters only. You should do both postcards and letters, and door knock the best ones.