What Can I Offer Sellers?
In my area, there are tons of investors hitting on preforeclosures. Out of these many investors, what are the factors which are going to induce a seller to choose one out of the pack (such as me)?
This seems sort of like "The Average Joe," where one person can choose from many (with the investors being the Joe's). How do I become "above average?"
I've read Joe Kaiser, and he stresses getting to them early. I did a test and went down to the recorder's office, found some, and then discovered that I could beat the list that comes out by 24 hours or so, on the average. That represents a lot of time, and I don't feel it's worth it for such a small jump, especially when I receive the same info for free shortly afterwards, with others doing all of the work, which would take me hours.
I am taking an aggressive approach, and am leaving the comort zone of my home office and heading into the streets, knocking on doors. I'm asking them directly "is this house facing foreclosure?" and I'm telling them directly that I want to buy it.
I've only done a few so far, because my computer broke down last week, and I've had to devote a lot of time to fixing the situtation. However, I like being out there talking to them.
So my questions are:
1. What about the "getting to them early" aspect I mentioned above? That will cut down on my volume of personal visits, and is time consurming. Is that going to be worth it (I'm guessing not)?
2. I think this is a MORE important question: Is there some sort of special benefit I can offer them? Sound business and sales philosophies revolve around giving people a lot, making them feel they're receiving a lot, and offering them good, solid benefits for choosing "you."
How can I provide that, give them a free trip to Hawaii or something as an incentive to sell me their house? Less drastically, dinner at a steakhouse? Helping them find a new place to rent, or whatever?
Need some input, thanks.
You might offer to move them and pay for the truck.
As for getting to them early, you might want to distribute your business cards around town advertising what it is you can do for distress homeowners.
In addition, you might want to do your own personal survery of a particular area in this town where foreclosure are most prevalent.
And, noticing the attorney's handling the majority of these cases of forclosure and contacting them to establish some sort of relationship as a means of getting a leg up on the competiition ... might help out.
Now, as for what you can offer them in terms of you over the average Joe, well, that's going to be up to you and your creative thinking. This will come from your conversations with the homeowner and finding out exactly what it is they want and or need given their particular scenerio.
Finally, in the game of sales, people buy from you because they like you ... I know that might sound cheesy, but , ultimately that's whati it boils down to. In this context you might have a little more wiggle room because the owner or owners are stressed, but, not much!
Good Luck!
How about providing them free credit repair after they sell to you? They obviously have credit problems if they are in foreclosure and this could be a great selling (buying) point for your deal. Hook up with a credit repair company and negotiate a discount for their services and work the price into your property analysis. [ Edited by Mario11779 on Date 10/06/2004 ]