Short Sale Calls From Homeowners

This week I received some interesting phone calls from my direct mailers that I send out. I will generally get between 5-10 calls a week and close on a few deals.  This week was rather slow but the calls were interesting.

Once in a blue moon, I will get the angry call from a person stating that they are offended that I sent them a postcard mentioning foreclosure, because now everyone knows that they are in foreclosure.  I tell them that it is public record and I'm hear to help, they usually do not respond well to that and I get a few swear words thrown my way.   I eventually tell them I will take them off my mailing list, which does not mean anything since I only mail my postcard once.  But, that quiets them down and they eventually stop harassing me.

The call I received yesterday was from a gentleman, who was a really nice guy.  My postcard gave him "sticker shock" because he had no idea he was in pre-foreclosure and even called the bank to ask about it.  The bank said they had not filed anything yet, but they were going to.  Well, in fact the bank did file and they did not even know about it!  Since he was trying to do a loan mod, he thought the bank would not go forward with foreclosure.  So, I spoke with him a little about it because I could tell in his voice that he was very concerned about losing his home and wanted some help. He flat out told me he did not want to sell his house, which is generally when I end the conversation and move on but this guy was different.  

So I took a few extra minutes out of my day, found the notice of trustee sale's for him and emailed it to him so he could see it with his own eyes.  He followed up with me and wrote me a very nice email thanking me for taking the time to find it for him. He was very sincere in his email.  I felt good about myself because even if I could not make money on the deal, I at least warned a good citizen who just had some bad luck due to the economy.

Anyways, he told me he works out his home office and keeps an eye out on the neighborhood. So a few hours later, he emails me back with a bunch of addresses in his neighborhood with phone numbers of vacant houses.  His neighbor across the street has been trying to sell his house for months.  He even walked across the street put a note on his neighbor’s door to call me about purchasing his house.  All in all, I received 3-4 good leads from this gentleman.  The only thing I did was a take a few extra moments out of my day to help him out.  I'm not sure if I'll close on them, but you never know.

The moral of the story:  When someone is generally in trouble and a good person give them a few extra moments and do a good deed.  We live in a busy and sometimes ruthless world but you never know what dividends you receive.