Module 10:How To Get Your Deals

Sold

OK, so at this point you’ve got hungry buyers, you’ve got a contract on a hot deal from a truly motivated seller… Now

it’s time to play, “Let’s Make A Deal!”

Time is of the essence at this point. You really want to match your deal up with a solid buyer before your “inspection period” expires, which makes your contract a ticking time bomb until you have it assigned.

For this reason, I employ a number of tactics simultaneously to get my property sold, and I recommend you do the same.

Go after the lowest hanging fruit first (whatever that may be for any given deal) but don’t just rely on one thing.

Instead be proactive and aggressively pursue as many roads as practical for you.

The Rifle Approach: The ‘Pocket’ Listing…

A ‘pocket listing’ is a term commonly used to describe when a Realtor gets a new

listing and already has what he’s determined to be the ideal buyer ‘in his

pocket’ so to speak.

So without even necessarily marketing it or listing it on the MLS, he simply calls his ‘pocket buyer’ directly, lets him know

about the deal, and viola — collects an easy commission check.

In the Realtor world, it’s actually looked down upon and it’s typically a violation of the

Realtor’s code of ethics.

This is mainly because one of an agent’s fiduciary responsibilities is to protect the best

interests of his client.

And if the listing never really sees the light of day (never gets fairly advertised in the open market) then the agent’s hardly doing his best to get the highest possible

price for his seller.

In other words, an agent may very well be doing what’s in his own best interests rather than his client’s when he/she

facilitates a ‘pocket listing’. But in your world — the world of the Real Estate Finder & Wholesaler — it’s a whole

different story, isn’t it?

You’re not the seller’s agent. You’re not the buyer’s agent. In fact, while you do

have a moral obligation to treat everyone you deal with fairly, the only person whose best interests you’re really responsible to cover is your own.

And if you know of someone in your stable of buyers who would be a perfect match

for the property you’ve just got under contract, then call him or her first to let

them know about it!

That’s another reason why it’s so important to record everything you find out about your

buyers and their buying criteria in your Highrise system. That way it’s there within

just a couple of clicks.

So in your world, ‘pockets listings’ are awesome! Don’t necessarily limit yourself

to only that — but call them first!

The Shotgun Approach: Emailing Your Buyers List… This is what I like to call “click a mouse, sell a house” method. You’ve worked hard to build a targeted

buyer’s list — now email them!

When you send an email out to your list offering a property at a deep discount, you

will get calls. If you’ve build a quality buyer’s list, your phone will ring, count on

it.

Here’s a tip: If you’ve already called one of your ‘pocket listing’ investors about the deal, you might want to give him a 24-hour window to check out the deal and size it up before you

blast it out to your list.

Be sure you tell him that you called him first, and you’ll agree to hold off for just 24 hours so

he has time to make up his mind. If he likes the deal, then you get a contract immediately.

If not, no harm done and blast away.

When emailing to my buyers list, I like to keep the email short and sweet. There’s no need to be long winded — these are busy people and, like all of

us, they’re going through their inbox with a finger on the delete key.

If I want my email to get their attention, it needs to be quick and digestible — and if

their interest is sparked, they’ll click through to my property listing page for

the details.

The Grenade Approach: Selling Your Deals Online

There are a number of free or low cost websites that real estate investors — and even retail buyers — frequently visit for wholesale deals.

Each time you get a property under contract you should post it (or have someone else post it for you) on as many of these

sites as possible.

The traffic at these listings sites is simply amazing. With hundreds of thousands of

Investor-Buyers visiting these sites, this can be a quick, easy, free way to sell your deals.

We actually have close to 100 that we can list on, but here are the top ones we use.

• HotBargainProperties.com — Requires site registration. Very simple to post houses, but can only upload 3 photos of a property.

• MyHouseDeals.com — No site registration required and no fees. Can only upload 6 photos of a property. Listing a separate website is not allowed.

• HotBargainProperties.com — Requires site registration. Very simple to post houses, but can only upload 3 photos of a property.

• MyHouseDeals.com — No site registration required and no fees. Can only upload 6 photos of a property. Listing a separate website is not allowed.

• Propbot.com — Requires free site registration. Much more detailed, yet harder to use.

Requires submittal of floor plan to list properties.

• Postlets.com — Requires free site registration. When you post a property at PostLets.com, it can be set to automatically post your property to these 10 additional sites for you: (1) Zillow.com, (2) Backpage.com, (3) Craigslist, (4) Googlebase, (5) Hotpads, (6) Kijiji.com, (7) LiveDeal.com,

(8) Oodle.com, (9) Trulia.com and (10) Vast.com. Easy to use. No restrictions on photo quantity. Post your property on this one site at NO charge, and it will automatically post your property to 10 additional sites for you!

With the strategies we’ve outline here, we almost always get buyers calling us back

quickly about our deals.

When they do, they’ll often have a handful of questions for you about the deal (if you did a good job describing the property on your website then hopefully there won’t

be too many).

 Make sure to have the numbers ready on hand to answer their questions. Of

course for me, it’s all right there in Highrise, so that me, or any of my staff

can get to it right away.

And if you use Highrise the same will be the case for you. No need to hunt for the file or rummage through paperwork — just login to

Highrise and click a tab.

In addition to answering their questions, here are some important questions we ask

them to try and get right down to brass tacks:

• “How long have you been an investor?” [if you don’t already know]

• “How many properties are you planning to buy this year?”

• “Are you interested in fixing and flipping or renting this property out?”

• “Do you have hard money lined up, or do you pay cash?”

• “How soon can you be ready to close?”

You’re basically trying to find out right off the bat, 1) how serious your buyer is right now, 2) how qualified he or she is to buy

right now, 3) whether this property meets his/her criteria right now.

You want to find out quickly if this Investor-Buyer is a player for this deal or

not.

“What if They Want to See the Property?”

It’s not unexpected that your Investor-Buyer would want to get access to see the inside of property. My policy is — and I suggest you do the same — is this:

With rare exception, I usually won’t allow them to personally see the inside of the property until after they’ve signed the assignment contract and put up the

earnest money deposit.

We tell them to go do a drive-by, and of course we have an array of great photos they can see. But we won’t let them in until we have the assignment contract

and earnest money — that’s first priority.

Why? Because you might have a number of people interested in any given deal.

And you don’t want to have to inconvenience your seller every time

someone wants to see the inside of the property, unless they’re a serious buyer.

Common Sales Killing Mistakes

We’re about to move into assigning your contract, going to closing and getting paid. But before we move past this section I’d like to share a few common deal-killing mistakes I see people making all

the time (and yes, some of which I’ve made myself).

As a wholesaler, your job is to give the people what they want. So if you’ve been careful about the properties you get under

contract, the selling side of wholesaling should be easy.

Easy is different from guaranteed. And success is far from guaranteed if you make

any one of the following killer errors:

1) Wrong Neighborhood

If the property is in an undesirable neighborhood, it stands to reason it will be hard to sell. Even if the numbers add up

to a great investment, most potential buyers are very wary of undesirable, or

‘bad’, neighborhoods.

A good rule of thumb here is, if the neighborhood is questionable, don’t put a

deal under contract there unless you already have a solid buyer (or buyers) in

place, and you know with fair certainty this deal will meet their criteria. Otherwise it’s

too risky.

If you’re somewhat certain (but not 100%) that you have a buyer interested, you could tie it up with a contract for just a few days and tell the seller you need to have your “partner” eyeball the house in addition to your inspector.

Then call your potential buyer right away (provided you trust him not to steal a deal away from you) and have him tell you whether it’s a winner,

or a no-go. That, or just stick with the better neighborhoods.

2) Not Enough Time

If you don’t give yourself enough time in the inspection period to find a buyer, then you can find yourself in a very awkward position — and might even be inclined to “roll the dice” a little on the

deal.

My rule of thumb is you need to have a bare minimum of 10-15 days to locate an investor-

buyer. Of course, many times you can match it to a good buyer a lot faster than that, but you need to give yourself this head room — if only

for your own sanity!

3) Your Numbers Are Off

Make doubly sure that your estimates of repair and the value of the property are

right. Make sure there aren’t any incurable aspects in the property! Is the

house an odd-ball?

Shotgun house next door to mansions? Do you have to walk through the bathroom to get to the kitchen?

If you have a horrendous, functionally outdated floor plan, this could easily be a deal killer because it would just cost too

much or be too involved to repair.

4) You Have No Network

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: You MUST have a list of able buyers on tap who are hungry for the deals you’re

bringing to the table.

There’s just no way around this — frankly you want to be finding deals for your buyers, not the other way around!

Once you’ve developed a large network of investor-buyers, you’ll find you start getting a feel for what your investors want individually, and you can

actually target finding those properties for them.