Your Deal Engine-Marketing
Investing in Real Estate has many parts to the engine that we need to understand to be successful. We can learn all about networking, getting good people on our team, how to analyze a deal, and finding a market to look for property. These areas are all important to learn and implement in our actions to become successful. But, of all the areas that we can benefit from there is one that stands out to be the main tool that will make our investment work less time consuming and that is, marketing.
You and your team can spend time looking for the right deal but we need to learn to work smarter not harder. By implementing some marketing ideas we can have potential properties coming to us rather then we always be chasing or working to find the next deal. Today in our Real Estate graduate call we discussed one way to start to bring the deals to us.
We discussed getting a list from our title company or county courthouse of those homes that have started in the foreclosure process. This is public information and we in turn can send a letter to those individuals that are starting in this process and are at least 3 months behind on their mortgage.
The intent of the letter is to let them know that we are a source that knows that they are behind on payments from the public records and that we can educate them on the options they have in their situation. The trickiest part of this is to get them to open the letter and not just have them think it is a form letter of some type that they throw in the garbage.
One strategy is to write out by hand a letter stating that we can educate them on their options. We then can copy that writing to a yellow legal document sized letter. The envelope needs to be or look like it was written out by hand as well, and it is addressed to their name. A higher percentage of people will open up a letter that is hand written and addressed to them. Then they see the bright yellow paper and the note written out by hand. They are more likely to continue to read that letter.
This information allows them to make a choice to call you as an educator to let them find out what options they have, based on the situation that they and their family are in.
This can lead to them asking you to come and give them their options. Based on our estimate of what the home is worth, and what they owe on the property in most cases these individuals will choose to do a short sale. Our strategy is to give them freedom of choice to pick which option will best fit their needs and desires.
This is one of the many ways to get people calling us on potential deals rather than us always working on our own to find the next one.
Related to this topic was an article in CNN/MONEY that lets us know that foreclosures are still a part of the market.
Foreclosures are still going strong
Foreclosures are up for the first time in nearly four years. But housing experts aren’t worried.
Nearly 52,000 U.S. homes went on the auction schedule in August, a 1% increase from 12 months earlier. Though only a slight bump, it marked the first year-over-year increase in foreclosure starts since November 2010.
This does not mean the return of the mortgage meltdown, according to Daren Blomquist, spokesman for RealtyTrac, which reported the August data.
Many foreclosures got delayed, especially starting in late 2010 when it came out that many lenders played fast and loose with the paperwork and processes needed to legally repossess homes — the “robo-signing” scandal.
Some states enacted new laws or regulations to ensure that borrowers were handled more fairly. The restrictions have delayed many foreclosures.
In New Jersey alone, there might be 80,000 defaulting mortgage borrowers still in the system, many of whom have not yet received a notice of default, according to Blomquist. There’s a state law mandating that lenders must show that they investigated each default and contacted the borrowers involved before a foreclosure lawsuit can even be filed.
That’s not the only place where mortgage servicers have had to adjust their procedures to make sure they stay within legal guidelines. It’s common in judicial foreclosure states such as Florida, where defaults have to go through the courts.
The Sunshine State was No. 1 in total foreclosure filings in August with one household in 400 getting hit by a notice of default, notice of sale, bank repossession or other filing.
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