Fresh Ways to get Short Sale Leads

Everyone knows that a good short sale professional needs to have leads to be productive. That means that part of your workload needs to include finding new opportunities and getting your name out there. It doesn’t matter if you are a short sale investor or agent; without leads you have no work!

There are two major methods to finding leads, passive and active. We will describe each type and then give examples of what you can do in each category (and you should be using both methods!)

Don’t underestimate the effort involved with finding leads. Some of our members report spending almost 50% of their working time just working on building leads and their pipeline! Remember that marketing is is a curve; especially as you are starting out and building a name for yourself, it can take a lot of effort to build your reputation, but it is a snowball effect, so keep pushing! The most successful short sale professionals use a combination of tactics to keep leads coming in 24 hours per day!

Passive Short Sale Lead Finding

No, passive does not mean you don’t do anything at all! What it means is that you build systems where the leads come to you. This is a great system, and once setup, can drive business to you without needing too much additional upkeep and effort when compared to Active lead finding. There are a lot of ways that you can find short sale leads passively!

Maintaining a Short Sale Blog

Keeping a blog is a great way to get traffic and get your name out there. The National Association of Realtors has said that almost 9 out of 10 individuals use the Internet to research their home options. But it does take time and effort! All Short Sale Artisan users get a free WordPress blog that can be customized and used with their own domain name.

Using a blog for short sale leads is more than simply creating it, as we alluded to earlier. You need to post content. You can easily find content by searching Google News, other blogs, or writing opinion pieces. Be sure to use keywords from your local area to target local investors – for example, a headline could be “How to Handle a Short Sale in Las Vegas, Nevada!”.

Make it a part of your routine to regularly post content on your blog to keep it active, and encourage comments and networking. You should write at least a post per month at the absolute minimum (preferably one per week). A typical post should take you no more than 2 hours to write, proof, and put out there, and it helps you establish credibility as well.

Syndicating your Blog Content

Don’t keep your blog on your site – get the word out there! There are a few ways you can syndicate your blog content. One way is by submitting your blog using your blogs RSS feed – this RSS feed is a special URL that can be used to automatically feed updates of your site out into the Internet. You should also install plugins to your blog to automatically post your short sale content to Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking accounts.

You can also manually copy your blog content onto various sites that allow you to post blogs, including sites like ActiveRain, BiggerPockets, and RealTown.

One final thing you can do is author articles on authoring sites – such as eZine articles. Another benefit of syndicating your short sale content is that all these link to your blog and increase traffic to your site, which in turn builds awareness of your services and products.

Twitter

Twitter lets you push out your short sale tips in small fashion. Start by interacting with the vibrant short sale community that exists on Twitter. This will also help build a reputation for you. Find other people’s blog posts through Twitter and comment on them. It’s important as well to build followers on twitter, and there are several automated tools that will post relevant content to your twitter account on a regular basis, like Twitterfeed.

Facebook

If you don’t know about Facebook, you have been living under a rock. Using Facebook for short sale lead finding can be very useful – Start by setting up a “page” for your business and branding it. Encourage people you have worked with before to become a fan and post relevant information frequently. Remember, blatant advertising is often a turn-off in social networking, so be sure to give some good tips and advice, for free, interspersed with mentions of your services that you provide.

Word of mouth

Meet people! Visit your local chamber of commerce. Hand out business cards. Encourage people you have worked with to spread the word about your services. The Referral Engine for short sale leads is one of the best ways to keep business coming in – but it relies heavily on your clients having had a stellar experience with your services, so make sure you deliver!

Seminars / Conferences

A great way to meet people with whom partnerships can be formed is seminars and conferences. These occur at real estate and short sale conferences nationwide. There are local chapters nationwide of the Real Estate Investing Associations (REIA), Real Estate Agent conferences, and more. Find them, attend, and be liberal with your business card! If you are an investor, you will want to meet with lots of realtors who you can work with. For agents, you will want to meet with other agents and talk about their lead generating strategies. Networking in general is a great way to build your influence and seminars and conferences feature like-minded individuals in the same industry.

LinkedIn

Similar to Facebook, create your company (if you are self-employed) on LinkedIn and promote it!

Finding Partners

This doesn’t mean splitting your work. It means partners to do portions of the work. For example, an investor may partner with a real estate agent, or a real estate agent may partner with a short sale attorney. If you find a person that has been a pleasure to work with, keep the relationship thriving and they will think of you when opportunities arise that they are made aware of. It is very similar to the referral engine from past clients in this regard.

Media Exposure

If you are a knowledge expert, pitch to the local news agencies. Foreclosures and the short sale market are in hot demand right now; and local news loves to hear from people involved in the industry to pitch their ideas and commentary. Another benefit of media exposure is that it also creates trust in your operation, which is very useful in an industry that certainly has its fair share of scam artists.

YouTube / Video Sites

Putting your mug up on YouTube or Vimeo is a great way to get your name out there. An example of two guys who have had good success with this is Group 46:10, who provides short sale training.

Active Short Sale Lead Finding

Active short sale lead finding means actively pursuing those who are in default. This is a tried and true method, but requires constant attention and pressure. Temporarily halting your efforts also temporarily halts any results or leads you may find from these methods!

Most of these methods involve scouring sources for potential leads and then actively following up on them. The benefit to this method is that you are targeting people who are in need directly; as opposed to blanket passive marketing where you hope someone will find you or be referred to you. This is more of the traditional “sales” types of activities.

Direct Mail

A tried and true short sale lead generating method. Sending direct mail to homeowners who are behind on their mortgages simply works. Short Sale Artisan sells leads to its members at discounted rates for homeowners in a given area who are behind on their loan payments by 30, 60, or 90 days but have not yet received a Notice of Default. These are prime candidates for a short sale, as they are behind on their payments but have not entered public record yet as being behind on their mortgages.

There are many methods of handling direct mail, but generally the suggested process is:

1. Identify who you will send our mail campaigns too (using pre-NOD lists is the best method)
2. Send out a first round of letters informing the service (Short Sale Artisan has full templates for all these docs in our Template Library!)
3. After a certain amount of time, send out a follow-up letter reminding them of the services you offer
4. After a period of time, send out a final third letter

It has been generally proven that going beyond a 3rd letter is unnecessary and wasteful. It does take time to build and manage these mail campaigns, but they nearly always result in new work in your pipeline!

Cold Call / Door Knocking / “Bird Dogging”

Similar to the Direct Mail, this often works but is time intensive. Pre NOD lists your purchase may include phone numbers. Door knocking is even more preferable than cold calling (be sure to dress for success!), but the disadvantage is time. You can call 15 people in an hour but perhaps only visit 4 or 5 houses on foot. Plus, phone calls can be used to market outside of your geographic area.

Another option on door knocking is “bird dogging”. This is basically outsourcing your door knocking operations to novice short sale investors. Bird dogs will go door knocking for you in return for a commission on any successful closes. The benefit is less time you need to spend going from house to house; but the negative is you lose some of your profit to the bird dog.

“Bandit Signs”

Bandit Signs are the signs you see on telephone poles and street lights around your home town that proclaim “We buy houses cash!”. These have limited success. Additionally, you should be aware of any town ordinances against public advertising – some towns will levy fines if you staple these signs on every streetlight in an area.

The benefit of bandit signs is that they are quick to put up and get you exposure. The call rate is very low, but even a handful of calls can make it very worthwhile if a lucrative opportunity pops up.

MLS Search

The MLS is a great site to find new leads. Search for keywords that are typical of short sale eligible properties, such as “Distressed” or “Quick Sell” or “Motivated Seller”. these are indications that there is a time constraint on the sale of the property. You can search the MLS directly from Short Sale Artisan’s Lead Finder.

Specialty Sites (foreclosure.com)

Foreclosure.com is similar to the MLS except it focuses on foreclosures and, more recently, short sales as well. Foreclosure.com contains REO properties and other distressed properties. The downside is it costs some money to become a member; however they do have a free trial period if you see something of interest.

Craigslist / eBay

Other searchable sites include Craigslist and eBay. On Craigslist, you can also post your services directly. eBay has a properties section, and similar to the MLS, you will want to search for keywords that correspond with short sales, like “distressed” and so on.

Keep it up!

Remember, marketing is not a one – time job. Finding leads takes a considerable amount of time – so build a system and a process in place where you utilize all the marketing channels effectively.The best marketers use a variety of methods and integrate them cleanly – for example, new blog posts are automatically posted on Facebook and tweeted on Twitter.

Do you have any tips of additional ways to find Short Sale Leads? We’d love to hear about them in the comments!