I recently advised a friend on a deal that brought back a point to me that needs reiterating to make your real estate business very profitable:
Keep In Contact With Your Potential Leads!
Your ability to do this will more than double your profits in real estate and that is the gospel truth! For example let me use this recent situation with a seller.
Mrs. Seller has a property with a first mortgage and a second mortgage over-financed at 110% LTV. The seller committed to keep the second current until the loan could be retired from tenant/buyer, however this is risky from an investor's standpoint if the seller defaults on keeping current. Then all of a sudden you the investor has an over-financed house with negative cashflow! Not good.
Even though the seller was not willing to deed the property at this time and hope that we could get the second discounted and deficiency judgment waived ......TIME CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING! Sure the deal doesn't make financial sense for an investor, but taking into consideration the second is two months behind and first current with a little "seasoning" makes this a great short-sale opportunity.
That right there is the crux of what I'm trying to stress to you. It is absolutely imperative that you keep in contact with sellers in a timely and cost efficient way because what doesn't work for someone right now can down the road and for you as an investor to.....these are called win-win situations.
Another quick example I want to give you to drive in this concept is that I use to write up offer on everything I looked at from sellers. I still do but I am much better at pre-screening sellers than previously. Back to the situation here is that I had this thick file of written offers as well as notes on verbal offers made.
After about a 5-6 month period time I had a thick folder now and many leads and deals that almost came to closing but not quite. Now being from the real estate school of "hard knocks" I stuck by my guns and didn't change my investing criteria so there were a number of deals that were close but no closing took place.
I then sat down and implemented a system with these contacts of mailing and calling. After I had my system in place I implemented it and a funny thing happened ....I had to put my current marketing biz on hold because of all the deals I was getting flooded with from just working on my previous contacts list!!
I hope by now that you can see the importance of being able to culture and grow your deals from leads. Marketing is an investment in your business so make the most of your investment.
I don't know if it will triple your real estate business by implementing a follow up contact system...but I DO know that it is definitely worth your time in profits and that is what this business is all about isn't it?
Think creatively and "out-of-the-box" for your real estate business and lastly…..good hunting as luck has absolutely nothing to do with it!!
Scott Rister is a successful full-time investor living in Dallas, TX. Closing 72 deals in one 9 month period, Scott's property acquisition company, One-Stop Realty, LLC maintains current holdings in four states.
After building a sizable portfolio of keeper properties that was not getting him where he wanted to go, he discovered the art of wholesaling. Since that time he's done hundreds of deals and focuses exclusively on motivated sellers using technology and a targeted marketing approach.
Scott Rister's approach is based on the belief that the successful real estate investor will leverage the best use of his/her time by implementing systems that can run on auto-pilot with minimal maintenance.
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