Maximize Real Estate Success with Pre-Foreclosure Opportunities

Simply the best way to consistently make a nice tidy profit in real estate any day. It was popular to take over payments subject to the underlying liens and mortgages but today not so hot, although this is coming back.

Used to be we could just take over distressed owner’s property subject to existing financing and evaluating how much cash it would take to pay off owner’s equity and/or bring existing financing current. It was and still is a matter of offering debt relief.

Often times you could make these properties cash flow.  You recouped your money by putting in the right tenant/buyer on a lease option.  Now more than ever pre foreclosures with over-leveraged properties are plentiful in the marketplace and small investors new and experienced are finding that this is the key to making your real estate business even more profitable.

If you haven’t signed up for a pre-foreclosure listing service, now’s the time, it’s not a good use of your time to hunt for these on your own.  Getting access to timely information and correctly implementing your marketing plan to reach distressed leads is a technique that you could literally live very well from.

How to turn that pre-foreclosure lead into big money

It all depends on your game-plan of how you want your real estate business to be. You should use the right vehicle to get your message to your target distressed market.  By the end of this article I hope to show you how you can effectively market to your target audience and turn your leads into profits.  So how do you get your phone to ring off the hook with people dying to do business with you?  In my opinion direct mail still works and is your best technique to reaching the distressed seller.  I know there are other effective ways to get into direct contact with the distressed owner…like online marketing, however……..

Door Knocking, Delivering Flyers

I have investor friends who swear by this and say it is their best weapon.  They forego any kind of mailing and simply show up at the door to talk people into selling.  I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t be up to talk to anybody coming to my door talking about my foreclosure.  I just wouldn’t admit to a stranger at my door that I’m in foreclosure – heck I wouldn’t even open the door….  I view this kind of marketing as harassment!   You can come but don’t mean they’ll answer the door.  I find this too time consuming and exhausting.

I used to however, visit the neighborhood and leave flyers on the doors or on cars parked in the drive way.  Do not leave anything in their mailbox unless you put a stamp on it, the mailbox is for the post office to use.

Online advertising for leads

I found that these leads were not as serious as those I contacted.  First it’s not every lead I wanted.   Picking the leads you want is a much better approach that way you work in the areas you want.  Direct mail is the best approach I’ve found works best for getting preforeclosure leads to call me.

It’s not worth your while at this point to spend that much time on lender, mortgage and loan information now, instead Pay attention to the type of property and the area rather than all the other information.  Often times that’s erroneous information anyway and you get all that from the owner once you begin to work with them.  For now, all you want is a motivated seller to call you.

Yes, there is some competition contacting pre-foreclosures but you can distinguish yourself from other investors by using some creativity.  My idea of creativity is by using interesting mail, frequency and a combination of marketing messages and offer.  Depending on which point to start your direct mail (NOD or closer to NOS) you should send at least 3 letters and 3 post cards.