Facebook Messaging Owners, Yay or Nay and what to Say?

Question

I recently began just looking up owners from the properties I Drive for Dollars for, then I look up info on the county assessors website then search the names on facebook of the owners. It seems to be making find owners easier. Any suggestions on how I should phrase the message reaching out and verifying it's the actual owner and If they are interested in selling the distressed property?

Jonathan Greene · Answer

If you do a high volume it might technically be worth it, but I find it very invasive. Most responses will be negative and some seemingly positive ones will string you along for trying to backdoor the contact. Facebook is surely still popular, but it's also popular for being a network for stolen or given away information so when you step on there and start contacting homeowners it's meta disruption. Sometimes distressed sellers are trying to hide from all of our calls and mailers, so taking another step is too much for me.

In the beginning, getting leads is hard, but you have to remember none of these are leads. No one on this last has asked you to contact them or said they are open to advertising or marketing from you via Facebook messenger. Leads are people who are contacting you to request your help and that's what you want to scale up to. You may hit a hail mary here and there doing this, but I don't think it's likely to get sellers to like you and want to work with you if you are messaging them about a house that may or may not be for sale in between them looking at baby pictures of their niece and cat videos.

Will Fraser · Answer

Hey La’Moure!  I do this and I find it to be a great tool.  It does constantly get me a reply like “how did you know that?” Or something more hostile, but it also helps me cut through all the middlemen and communicate with the seller (or figure out that the seller is not on FB, haha).

I send a video to them saying something like “Hi Kim, I am ______ and I’m interested in buying a house that I’m looking at on _____ street and I looked up the owner’s name and it’s . . . The same as yours!  Are you by chance the owner and, if so, would you be interested in selling?  I’m not trying to pull any funny business here, but instead I would like to make an offer on the house and see if selling it in the next two weeks would be possible.”

Thanks for Facebook and the internet we’ve never had easier access to younger distressed sellers!