Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Sellers

“Jason I need your help!” That was the subject of a note, which my assistant Lisa sent to me. It was a note from a new investor I was helping out. And the note happened to contain a major concern of many investors, which shouldn’t be a concern at all.

So what did this person need help with?

Well, this person had submitted an offer to a seller via email. For one reason or another, the potential seller was not happy with the offer. The seller emailed this person back, basically saying, “I do not like this offer, this sounds like a scam, I’m reporting you to the authorities.”

Has this ever happened to you?

If not, it eventually will (if you want to be successful.) Let me explain. You see, often times our offers will offend people. We (investors) are making low-ball offers and some sellers are not going to appreciate them. But guess what? The people who don’t like your offers are not motivated sellers, so it’s not like they were going to sell to you anyway.

There have been multiple times throughout my investing career where people have threatened me and said they were going to report me to the police, etc. One time, I had a Realtor call me and tell me that sending direct mail was illegal, and she was going to turn me in.

She was on my absentee owner list and couldn’t believe I was sending people “illegal” letters. Another time I was sending landlords emails on Craigslist. One landlord emailed me back and said that I was running a scam and he was going to report me to the state’s Attorney General.

Now, the most important thing to remember is that if you aren’t doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about.

People can threaten you all they want. They can make things up and say they are going to report you to the authorities. (Obviously, most of these are empty threats and people just feel good by threatening others.) Even if they did report you, who cares. You did nothing wrong.

Even though I’ve been threatened multiple times I’ve never had any of the authorities call me or any thing like that. It doesn’t worry me at all because I would never do anything dishonest in this business.

Plus, when I do my deals, everything is in writing. All of my paperwork has been prepared by an attorney and most importantly, I do all closings at a title company, so a third party takes care of everything for me.

Next time some seller is in a bad mood and threatens you, just shrug it off and remember its part of this business. As long as you are 100% honest you never have anything to be afraid of.

Photo: broma

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.