How To Gain A Seller’s Trust When Doing A Subject-to

For new investors, closing a sub-2 deal can be difficult. After all, you don’t have a lot of experience, which means you probably don’t have your scripts “polished” when it comes to explaining the many details of a sub-2 to a seller. In fact, you may not have scripts at all, which is something you need to change immediately.

Why do you need scripts? Because when it comes to a sub-2 deal, you’ll get the same questions and objections over and over and over. And most of them are questions based on trust.

For instance, when I’m doing a sub-2 deal I make it a requirement that I pay the sellers mortgage. Since I will be the owner of the property, I don’t want to take the chance that the seller would take a check I wrote to him and spend it on something other than the mortgage. However, when I tell a seller this I’ll often get asked, “How do I know you’re going to actually pay the mortgage?”

First off…

I tell the seller that it would make absolutely no sense for me to not pay the mortgage. That the reason I’m doing this deal is to re-sell the house to a tenant/buyer in the future for a profit. And that if I didn’t pay the mortgage, the house would get foreclosed on and I wouldn’t have a chance to sell the house in the future. In short, it wouldn’t make any business sense to do this.

Secondly, I put a clause in my contract that says if I don’t make a mortgage payment within 30 days of when a payment is due, the house automatically reverts back to the seller. Also, I tell the seller he can verify that I’m making the mortgage payment on time every month by calling the 800 number for his company and going through the automated system to make sure the payment has been made.

Lastly…

I pull out my testimonial sheet which has a ton of testimonials from sellers who I’ve done sub-2 deals with who “sing my praises” and tell how I helped them out of a tough situation. After I’ve shown them this sheet and have answered all of their objections I almost always close the deal.

Of course, I don’t close every deal because some sellers are just not motivated enough. When that happens you just move on, but you have to make sure and follow up with them every 30 days to see if they’ve changed their mind. (My record is getting a house 8 months after the first meeting. I still own the place today and it’s a beautiful town house with a one car garage.)

The bottom line is, subject-to deals are a great way to make a lot of money in the real estate business. Just make sure and practice your scripts and follow up, and you should become successful a lot sooner.