All Forum Posts by: Braden Smith

Hey @Toby D. Welcome to BP! I'm a local investor and realtor in NOLA. 

I have an associate mine selling a package of condos in Metairie. Shoot me a PM if you would like some more info.

Hey @Jabari Jones. Welcome to BP! I'm a local investor and realtor in NOLA.  Your next step just depends on what your goals area. Are you looking for short term gain to build capital? Or do you want to create long term passive income?

I can tell you that with the way prices are in New Orleans it is hard to buy rental properties that will cash flow, unless you are looking at distressed properties you can get well below market value.

Hey @Susan Grinde. This questionnaire seems long because it provides in depth explanations for each sections and explains why you should be asking these questions. I have used this guide and these questions for a long time and I have never had anyone refuse to answer any of the questions. The main purpose of this set of questions is to determine timing and motivation. If you don't have a seller with the right time frame and motivation you are wasting your time talking to them. 

Once you have determined the homeowners timing and motivation you can proceed with the rest of the questions if they are ready to sell and motivated to do so. But as the explanation states, "If you can't find any compelling problem in this section, you should seriously consider moving on with your life by referring them to some sort of service provider that might be more appropriate for them."

The remainder of the questions will help you to determine the best strategy for the deal, whether it needs a short sale, whether seller financing is an option, and how to structure a deal or an offer that can work for both you and the homeowner. It is not just for wholesale deals.

Read over the whole thing, and then read it again and again until you are comfortbale with it. Read it out loud. Practice with a partner. Read it to your dog. Just read it and say it out loud as many times as you can and as often as you can. Before you know it it will be second nature to you and you won't even need the paper in front of you.

Good luck! You got this... go get em!

Hey @Susan Grinde. I don't recall where I got this from, but this should help you...

Motivated Seller Questionnaire

A motivated seller questionnaire is the simplest and most useful tool for screening motivated seller leads. The motivated seller questionnaire is especially useful for screening real estate leads and sellers that come through blanket marketing methods like bandit sign marketing, flyer marketing and other more specific real estate lead generation methods.

The single most damaging mistake made by beginner real estate investors is not being selective enough about who they spend money, time and effort dealing with. The sample motivated seller questionnaire (and explanation paragraphs) on this page will equip you to avoid this common newbie mistake.

If you're new to wholesaling or creative real estate investing, you can save yourself a whole lot of mental and financial anguish by asking a series of two or three questions to help you decide whether to deal with a property seller or not.

The information you gather from a well crafted motivated seller questionnaire can also help you determine whether the property in question is worth investigating further, regardless of what you find about the urgency of the seller's situation.

The section below will take you through a shortened sample form and discuss each section in detail.

Contact Information

1. Full Name
2. Home Phone
3. Work Phone (maybe fax also)
4. Address
5. Spouse Name (if any)
6. Email Address
7. Property Address (For Sale)
8. How did you find us?
9. Who helps you make major life decisions?

The reason you must capture this information as soon, as quickly and as completely as possible is because the phone line can cut off, or the seller might waver temporarily at the beginning of the contact process and you want to make sure you can get in touch with them somehow if that happens.

Although the property address might seem out of place in this part of the questionnaire, it's there so that you can do some preliminary due diligence research on the property. The last question is to help you monitor and track the effectiveness of your various marketing methods and tools...it can also help give you a preliminary idea of how motivated the seller is.

For instance, people who contact you through bandit signs will tend to be more 'out of options' than people who contact your newspaper or yellow page ads.

Screen for Motivation

1. Is property currently on the market?
2. If yes, how long has it been listed?
3. Why are you selling?
4. Have you listed your home with a real estate agent?
5. What is your plan if your house doesn't sell?
6. Do you have any written offers yet?
7. Who lives in the property right now?

These are some of the types of questions that will help you determine what stage of motivation (read: desperation) your seller is in, and whether they've really thought through what their options are...

It's what you do here that starts to differentiate the ethical wholesaler from everyone else. If people have other reasonable options, an ethical wholesaler begins to educate them on those 'better' options, right about here. You might be shocked when they come back to you anyway... because the convenience of dealing with you as someone they now trust is 'better' to them than getting top dollar for their house.

Situational Motivation

1. Are your mortgage payments current?
2. In the process of divorce or separation?
3. Downsizing? If so, why?
4. Job relocation pressure?
5. Pre-foreclosure notice received?
6. Potential problem with co-owners? (Divorce, probate, business, etc)
7. Property habitability issues due to severe property damage?
8. Other need for fast and immediate lump sums of money? How much?

The questions in this section cut to the heart of why a property owner might run out of options to sell their house the conventional way. Many of the solutions you have to deliver to get substantial discounts on property would have to be solutions to headaches that nobody else (including the seller) wants to tangle with.

If you can't find any compelling problem in this section, you should seriously consider moving on with your life by referring them to some sort of service provider that might be more appropriate for them. 'Service providers' could include real estate agents, accountants, attorneys or even a non-profit organization like NACA-Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (not that they don't have their issues).

Property Inspection Report

1. Property style: (duplex, rambler, Victorian, Spanish style, etc.)
2. Square footage
3. Age of property
4. Neighborhood Quality scale
5. Property damage report (Roof, Foundation, HVAC, electrical, plumbing)
6. Any other improvements needed?

This section is about the physical condition of the property and to a certain extent, the neighborhood. Motivated sellers screening involves knowing how to ask open-ended probing questions about the property, to get more accurate and time-saving answers.

For example, instead of saying, "How is the roof? Good? Bad? Ugly?", you should ask instead, "When was the roof last replaced?"

Some landlords and property owners will call you assuming they can scam you into overpaying for their property...these may be motivated sellers later on, but at the moment, they're not worth dealing with and your screening process needs to be able to flush them out.

Financials

1. Asking Price
2. Mortgage loan balance
3. Any 2nd mortgage on property?
4. Lenders for 1st (and 2nd) mortgage
5. Interest rates on outstanding loans
6. Are loans fixed or variable? What are loan terms?
7. Do you have all your loan papers accessible?
8. Are there any other liens or debts on your properties?
9. If yes, do you have lien papers?
10. By how much are you behind on your mortgage?
11. Have you been sent a foreclosure date? What date?
12. How much rent per month? Proof? (if rental property)
13. Any non-rental income from property?
14. Any HOA (Homeowner's Association)? How much are HOA payments
15. How much for PITI (Principal, Interest, Taxes, Insurance)payment?
16. Utilities costs (Gas, Electric, Water) for the past 6 months

This part of your motivated seller questionnaire gives you the information with which you'll be able to decide whether the property needs a short sale, whether seller financing is an option, and how to structure a deal or an offer that can work for both you and the homeowner.

You'll also need this information to properly market the house to your investment property buyers.

If you're a new real estate investor, I hope you arm yourself with the information on this page to work out win-win-win solutions for your sellers, your buyers and yourself.

Motivated Seller Questionnaire Red Flags

The power of the motivated seller questionnaire is that it helps guide your interview process, and gives you a framework to make the screening as conversational as possible (In other words, it's a script, without the mechanical sounding words and phrases).

It helps you in the 4 following ways:

1. Avoid Outright deception by prospective property sellers
2. Properly screen your inbound leads for seller motivation
3. Helps screen out irritable, irrational, potentially psychotic people you should never, ever deal with
4. Helps you build rapport with target ideal candidates
5. Supplies information to help structure your deals

Avoiding Outright Deception
I've had a property owner tell me "..All the house needs is less than $5,000 dollars in repairs, and it's ready..." on a house that clearly needed so much work ($35,000 to $40,000 dollars) that no buyer or agent had ever called him back.

Better Motivated seller screening
Being a successful real estate wholesaler is a matter of alignment. Your services are only appropriate for a small segment of the property owner and investor buyer markets, and you have to make sure that you deal with the right people only. Being a successful real estate investor or wholesaler starts with not being shy about asking all the questions you need to get the answers you have to have.

If you're dealing with a motivated seller and you're too squeamish to ask all the questions required to build the required rapport and ask all these questions, you'll definitely regret it down the road and it may be too late then.

Avoiding the Almost-Insane Customer
I really apologize to you if you're one of my sensitive readers, but you'll find out if you really want to go out there that some people are really emotionally maladjusted enough to be considered almost-crazy.

Every landlord or homeowner that I've ever regretted dealing with came with warning signs at the very beginning of the communication process; warning signs I should have heeded. There's no amount of money worth the hassle you'll get by dealing with someone who's going to lie about what you said, lie about what they said, change their minds 2 or 3 times a day, and then run off with your money! I hope I've said enough. Do as I say, not as I did.

Building rapport with sellers
This is one of the most under-estimated aspects of making money in real estate. All other things being equal, having a nice rapport with the seller can mean having a 120 day settlement term rather than 5, greater flexibility to inspect, or show the property and countless other details that can make or break your deal. Having a seller information script that you can use in your initial conversation goes a long way in helping you build that rapport.

Be careful to use a conversational (but authoritative) tone when going through the information gathering process using the motivated seller questionnaire.

Deal Structuring
What determines whether you have a wholesale deal, a short sale, lease option or Seller financing (Subject-to) deal?

The structure of financing currently on the house, the mortgage balance, the sellers other financial assets, and so on!

If you don't have these pieces of information, no fancy real estate deal analysis software being peddled by the real estate money gurus will help you.

On the other hand, if you have all that verified financial and house payment information from the seller, you can do all the real estate deal analysis you need on a paper napkin and be successful.

What's the moral of this story?
Your motivated seller questionnaire can help you land a deal and being squeamish about asking the questions on the motivated seller questionnaire, is probably a sign that you should look for one of the thousand other ways to make your fortune. Good luck! 

The numbers just don't work very well there. Same with most Kenner and the Westbank. 

Hey @Andrew Pierre. Yes, we have used Listsource and other similar sites. I posted to see what sites other investors like to use and what criteria they are using for the lists such as:

Geography: Orleans Parish

Property: 60 to 100% equity, 7+ years length of residence

Options: Mailing address complete, Exclude corporate-owned, exclude trustee-owned, absentee owned in-state, absentee owned out-of-state

Was also looking to see which direct mail providers other investors are using.

We do purchase from wholesalers. We primarily do rehabs in Orleans and Jefferson parish and prefer the Eastbank, but are not opposed to the Westbank if the deal makes sense. We don't do much in Kenner unless it's in the better areas and we don't buy in N.O. East. We will look at just about anything though, especially if it is a good deal. Add us to your buyers list.

For those that buy mailing lists, what criteria are you using that you have found to be productive?

Any suggestions for the best place to buy lists?

Any suggestions for the best place for the mailers?

I am looking to supplement my driving for dollars lists with some other lists as an add on. We are doing 6 part mail campaigns spaced out every 4 to 5 weeks with a variety of mail pieces.

Thanks @Nate Pummel. I'll shoot you a PM. I still haven't decided on a solution just yet.

I agree @Kurt Kwart... I'd like to hear some firsthand knowledge about Zoho. I have been considering Zoho, but don't know much about it.

Thanks for the reply @Daria B. I will look into that.

@Mike Wood hit the nail on the head and I agree with him. The builders we work with are having just that issue... finding land they can acquire where the numbers will work for new construction. The ones that were building in Lakeview have pulled out because lots have gotten too expensive. The only ones still building are the ones that were sitting on some invesntory of lots.

And he is right about Gentilly. Too many cheap houses have been built in most areas to where you can't compete on price, unless you are in the top of the Oak Park area. But lots have gotten expensive there too. They have doubled in price in the last couple of years.