More Foreclosure Related Transactions
I don’t know about you, but there are a lot more foreclosure-esque real estate transactions (bank owned, FHA/VA Repo, Short Sale …) happening lately… at least in my neck of the woods. It is getting to the point where we are closing at least one to two foreclosure-related properties a month (buyer/seller) – in ADDITION to the “regular” ones we close.
Bank owned deals aren’t so bad, but the short sales are massive amounts of dain bramage. Recently, it has gotten to the point where Derek and I could not avoid them any longer. But we sure as heck didn’t know how to effectively deal with them, either.
And the last thing that the real estate market needs is a bunch of real estate agents who know NOTHING about short sales … out there taking listings that are SHORT SALES. These homeowners are in enough of a mess. They don’t need a “regular” real estate agent. They don’t even need a “great” real estate agent. They need someone who knows what the heck they are doing when it comes to short sales.
We figured that we need to be competent in ANY market that we work in so, Derek and I decided that we needed to learn more about short sales to survive in this market.
Becoming Better Educated
We went to all the free title company classes about effectively listing and negotiating short sales. They were a little helpful, but not enough. We wanted more.
Finally we found a program that we thought would help us … and MAN! It was one of the best investments that we ever made in our Real Estate education and business. Now, normally I don’t jump around and do a dance about a product or service (well, unless it’s Real Estate Shows) but here is an exception… so I am taking this time to share our experience.
Certified Distressed Property Experts
“Stop Walking Away From Business you can earn commissions and help homeowners in the process (on the deals other agents don’t know how to handle).” – CDPE Website
Derek and I just finished a 3 month course, and are now Certified Distressed Property Experts©. This was a six 2-hour per session course about how to effectively LIST and SELL a short sale listing. We got an information packed manual and a whole notebook of duplicate able and customizable forms and worksheets designed to help streamline the short sale process.
But What Did We Learn?
I think my brain was going to explode during each session with all the awesome information/statistics/tips, so instead of making this post EVEN LONGER, here are some of the highlights of the class:
This course helped us understand and really identify the difference between a DISTRESSED Seller who NEEDS to sell and a DISENCHANTED homeowner who just WANTS to sell. A short sale is not an option for the latter.
We also got great tools for full qualifying the people and properties that we may work with:
- Distressed Seller: Why are they distressed? The Top 16 reasons why a homeowner is distressed include: Rate adjustment, loss of job, death, divorce and incarceration. Where are they at in the foreclosure process? Where they are in this process determines HOW and IF we even get to work with them.
- Distressed Property: What are the economic and physical factors that are contributing to the distress? Identifying ALL these factors will help you better negotiate the short sale with their lender.
The CDPE courses also gave us GREAT insight to the emotional situations surrounding distressed sellers, and gave us tools to help us be appropriately compassionate, understanding and patient.
… and we also learned how to apply the same compassion, understanding and patience to the people at the loss mitigation departments of the mortgage banks that we work with. And that little piece of information has paid off in GOLD. The minute we started asking helping-focused questions to the people on the other end of the phone … we started getting STAR treatment. To the negotiator – or whomever we speak to at the mortgage company, we say:
“I understand that you are probably buried in work, so we made sure that we sent over a complete short sale packet for 123 Main Street (both via fax and USPS) to make it as easy as possible for you. WHAT ELSE CAN WE DO TO HELP YOU get our file processed and closed as soon as possible?”
I’m telling you! It works WAY Better than, “WHAT?!?!? You want me to fax that *!?%*?! packet AGAIN?? You people are the most inadequate people on the planet!!” (You can THINK it, but just don’t say it …)
There is an astronomical turn-over rate at these places, and we need to be PREPARED to have your file “transferred” at least once during the process.
Other things that we discussed were:
- How to put together a bullet-proof short sale package and what verbiage to use when negotiating with banks.
- How to augment your current business by helping distressed sellers short-sale their home … without engulfing all of your time and energy.
- How NOT to get raked over the coals by the lenders and actually get paid a decent commission to LIST and SELL short sales
How the Certified Distressed Property Designation Impacted Our Business
Even BEFORE we finished the course, we were seeing results:
- We negotiated and closed a short sale before our seller even missed a payment (OMG!) and were paid a 6% commission (we co-oped 3% to the Buyer Agent) AND got all our transaction fees covered, as well.
- We successfully extended the foreclosure dates on 3 distressed listings by 6 Months!
- We comprehensively educated all of our “distressed sellers” regarding the entire short sale process, which has de-stressed them enough to work WITH us to get things done in a timely manner.
We have found that the Certified Distressed Property Expert Designation is already helping our business. We are now short sale expert real estate agents who can competently work with distressed properties, and can take this competence to make our business grow even further.
If you are seeing an influx in distressed properties in your market, and would like to become more competent in short sales … and better your business in the current market … Then check out the Distressed Property Expert Certification website, or call: 1-800-482-0335
