Finding and contacting pre-foreclosures

I wanted to share some ideas posted by Jim DFWMentor about finding and contacting pre-foreclosures:

Opinions:
Door Knocking - Terribly time consuming and represents the least chance for a deal. On the plus side, it helps you to identify the characteristics of abandoned houses.

Calling on Phone-
This method yields only about 30% as far as listed numbers. The ones you do talk with, usually end up calling you names you may have to look up. They tend to bring your mother into the insult-fest.

Mailing-
BY FAR the best way to market to foreclosures! Not with the intention of reaching the owners still living there mind you. The ones that respond are just gravy.
The intention is to have the post office tell ME where the ABANDONED houses are, for just .39 cents!!!
Abandoned owners have no emotional ties left and once you find them, nearly 100% of the time they will sell for payoff. Here is a list of steps you must take to be effective:

1- Plain white legal size envelope.
Bright colors piss owners off as they think that you are bringing attention onto them. Like the mailman doesn’t know??? lol
2- Regular 1st class stamp
A metered stamp looks non-personal.
3- HAND WRITE name & address and don’t list “or current resident”
In fact, have a female do that part. In DFW women get a 50% better return rate than men. Less intimidating.
4- Return address must be a home, street address and NOT a PO Box or work address. Also, do not put your name on it. If they see a name and they don’t know you… it gives them a reason to not open it.
5- Have a stamp that says, “RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED”
This is the major one. Even though it is a 1st class letter, the post office is slow to return letters without it. Usually 15% of all the foreclosure houses are abandoned. In fact, 30% of the time the post office will return the letter with their forwarding address printed on the envelope!
Simply the best chance you will give yourself.

Following these steps should get you between a 2% and 8% return call rate on top of 10-15% returned letters to follow up on. Just make sure the letter you write is good.

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