All Forum Posts by: Brian P.

Paul

Apparently I hit a nerve with the snot nosed kid remark as a metaphor. Good. You say you wanted to gather info on what the agent could do, I think it is more like you wanted ammo to tell her what she has failed to do. If the call was just to exchange info then there was not great urgency except on your part . Or why hasn't it sold, why hasn't it sold? OK just checking out you sense of humor.

You say you started out with an appropriate price, well only in your mind, the market told you different. Also your 5 days on market average is for solds, right? not all listings. Also you didn't answer the commission question. Talk her into to less then six. Investor or not investor. many sellers go for a say a 4% commission in an area that is 6% and as a result often is say the final sales price ends up at 4% less then if agents were going for the norm and you got the full results of the MLS. So a seller saved 2% but lost 4% but they walk away smiling about how they saved 2% not realizing it cost them 2%. You got to offer selling agents the norm for the area. I'm a broker and investor but when I was selling one of my properties I offered the selling agents 4% instead of the normal 3%. And it really didn't cost me because the holding costs in the area was usually 1% per month so selling it quick offset the extra 1%. I don't know your market, but I wonder as Joel mentioned if you are in what I call a falling knife market. That is one where you have to price where the knife is going to be, not where it was. Just like a fighter pilot you have to shoot ahead of the plane your trying to hit not at it. But 5 days on market sounds like a hot market unless solds are a very low percentage of listings. Two things sell a house, marketing and price, if she is maketing decently then it is price. Price can be raised with fantastic terms but that is the only way usually.

What Richard D is telling you is you can buy the house and own it but the person with the life estate has the rights of possession until they die, but you can buy these rights and the remainderman's interest then you will own the whole thing just like a regular deal. So check with the occupant and find out the real skinny. I have bought a few of these. Twice I left the life estate holder interest alone. One was 86 and looked like she would die next week. Well she almost lived to one hundred. So no income for a very long time. Still came out well because of soaring prices in that area, but you can't count on that. Another time a daughter moved in during the time her mother was in a home and thought she had the right to stay there after her mother died, but I had to tell her differently. It was almost a year before  I found out the mother had died.

All depends, are they vacant, or occupied. If occupied are they occupied by the owner. Start with the vacants and find the owner. These are the best prospects at the moment. And don't cast the others to the do it later pile, get the info on them. Find out where the owners are living before you contact them. This is often a clue. Often they want to get rid of these properties but stall for one reason or another.  I like to follow up on these just after they got their new tax bills so I throw them in a tickler file for around that time. What to say. easy, I was wondering what your plans are for your property over at 123 main. Never know I had one guy tell me he didn't own that property, found out he had sold several properties he had  been willed and thought this was among them so he basically just ignored it.

when I saw this headline in the news I felt really rotten. I know if they remove the agent from the property and 24 hours pass, the likely hood of a good ending is small. I used to go over safety every week with my agents. This is one of the dangers of being an agent. Agents get careless because this is a one in a ten-thousand type of deal, and they think that won't happen to me, but one in ten- thousand is still way to low for me.

I suggested that the ladies carry hornet spray instead of pepper spray because you need to be close for pepper spray but hornet spray could travel 30 feet. And this saved one of my agents during an attack. I didn't allow them to show vacant properties without a backup agent in a second car. This agent thought oh one time won't hurt. And this was even after we implemented a required office visit before we would show property to a new prospect. and remember it doesn't need to be a solo male watch out for women too, or couples.

I allowed subletting but not really, my leases required a automatic rent increase to the original tenant of x dollars per day for every day the property is occupied by some one other then the original tenant. This way I can sue the original tenant for more and it is a good deterrent and the few tenants that wanted to do this changed their minds when they thought about the risk. They just assumed the sublease passed all responsibilities onto the new tenant. When they found out they could be held for damages etc done by the new tenant and they weren't just going to be pocketing some extra bucks each month they quickly changed plans, they didn't want to be a real landlord.

For sale sign in prospects yard, yes it works, I did this by accident the first time. My sign guy picked up the list for signs to be placed and in one corner I had written a address of a property I was trying to find the owner for. I got a call from the owner asking what was going on and asked for the address, he gave it and I said we don't have a listing for that address, are you sure you have the address right and he said yes he owns the property. long story short we talked and I said I would sent someone out to remove it right now and thanks for calling that sign belongs somewhere else. He calmed down and that lead to his property being vacant and as he described it, it hit me this was a guy I was looking for and we made a deal.

Another time many years later guess kids messing around on a saturday night removed one of our for sale signs and planted it elsewhere and we got the call. That didn't lead to a deal but the homeowner trying to figure out why they picked his house. But he mentions some one down the street was thinking of selling and that sign play lead to a listing, signs on the wrong property seemed to work for me.

So didn't put out for sale signs, I put out reward signs, trying to locate the owner of this house, $100 for information leading to the owner. And yes the owner could collect it. And they did ask for it.

Because you are an agent I would just hit them at the door. Simple script. Hi, i'm sally and I know you had your home for sale, are you still planning to sell it? (yes) I am a real estate investor but I also have a real estate license but I wanted to check your home out and see if it is something I might be interested in buying as an investment. would it be ok with you if I took a few minutes to see the property? I won't go into the rest of the script but it gets you started. And whatever you do learn to smile. I never liked mail or telephone for these two classes very much because the success rate was always so much higher for face to face as an investor-broker. Carry two business cards, your agents card and your investors card. 

The only way this makes any sense is that the owner had a land contract with the "tenant". In California you have to foreclose on a land contract. So if the owner wants them out he just can't evict, they are not normal tenants. Maybe there is a deal here, or the foreclosure sale will bring in market value and no deal.  Maybe just call the owner and get the facts and see if it is a land contract. If he was selling on a land contract I would assume he doesn't really want the property, he just sold during a time when this was one way to sell.

Better lead generators for what?

Check out an actual notice. In my current state the notice to creditors also shows who has been appointed the personal representative for the estate. Maybe yours is the same.