Doug Pretorius (ON)

Hey Jonathan, how many of your listings as a realtor do you sell to your own buyer vs. other agents bringing the buyer?

BTW Steve, with the approach I mentioned above where you take back a note for the cash flow. You're liability would be no different than a standard CA. All you're really doing is taking part of your assignment over time in a series of payments instead of a lump sum.

Interesting take on it randian.

I'm the local Avon lady...er, lord?

It's the Steve's! SteveK, like <Steve> said, hang in there. If it's slow where you are now around the holidays it should pick up around mid-January. <Steve> nothing special, just plain old dialing for dollars. I still don't much care for 'cold' calling but I'm pretty good at it now and comfortable with it when I actually get around to it LOL! The possible deal I mentioned above was a no 6 weeks ago, now it's a probably. Oh believe me, I'm searching for a way to get all the money and not have any responsibility Another simple way to do it although you'd be giving up the back end profit as well (not a problem if it's a marginal deal to begin with) is to do an assignment and carry back a note for the cash flow. Example: Your deal with seller... Price: $200k Rent: $1,500 Term: 2 Years Let's say the house isn't worth much more than $200k but you can rent it out for $2k. A normal CA would have that cash flow (or part of it) go to the seller and you take say $8k. But why not keep that cash flow for yourself? Assign the deal for $20k...payable $8k upfront and $500/month for 24 months, all of it credited to the purchase price. That would be kinda half way between a CA and a SLO on the profit scale, and you would have zero liability for vacancy or repairs. That's what I'm going to do on my next deal just to see how it works out. Lots of deals to be had here where the seller wants or needs too much for a SLO to be worth it.

Steve and I were discussing possible ways to limit or eliminate the liability of making payments on vacant SLOs. Turns out a seller that I have a deal lined up with for January had the answer. They will take part of the option consideration, and in exchange they'll take responsibility for any vacancy or repairs. Nice! So I'll keep a few bucks upfront, all the cash flow, and the back end and not have to lose a wink of sleep worrying about my T/B skipping out in the middle of the night. How's everyone's business going in the run up to Xmas? I've got motivated sellers coming out of my ears, 10 years doing LOs and I've never seen it like this before!

Congrats! Give us details!

That would be nice Dion! Let us know how it turns out.

I've only put one house under lease option that was OOT without ever meeting the seller or seeing the house in person. I had it all set up where the seller was going to show the house for me and everything, but sadly she found a regular tenant before I found a T/B. I do find that the deals are MUCH harder to put under contract when they're out of your area. But that could also be because I'm using email marketing to get them, which has a very low conversion rate anyway.

LOL no doubt Everyone understands that if you say "I'm an investor" that you're likely not going to be living in the house yourself. Does that turn some sellers off? Yes. The only downside I've found is that when I say I'm an investor many sellers assume I have piles of cash to put down.

The thing I find the most odd is that this sort of thing never comes up with T/Bs. I've yet to have a single buyer say something like: "So, do you own the house?" which I figure is the rough equivalent of a seller saying: "Are you going to be living in the house yourself?" It would be nice if it just didn't come up. But when it does you might as well just say "I'm an investor" and leave it at that.

I've asked myself and others that very question and tested every approach imaginable. And come to the conclusion that there is no 'right way' to go about it. If a seller isn't comfortable with what you're proposing, nothing you say will change that. The only solution is to look for other sellers, the ones who ARE at ease with the whole concept.

I haven't tried texting and emails don't work well for me. But with calling I'm getting the same 25-30% positive response right now as well.

I'm willing to make the sacrifice to get MLS access, even if it means popping gravol like tic tacs.

I just emailed an agent about a listing and it turned out we couldn't do anything with it. So I offered to trade my cash only leads and he said let's talk when he gets back in town after the weekend. I was thinking about a straight up trade of cash leads for rent to own leads, but I love the idea of being hired as his assistant for MLS access, or getting expired listings at the very least.

Let her pay for the attorney to write it up, then compare it with MC's contract. If you can live with the changes you can go ahead with the deal, if not you can explain what changes you need to make to feel comfortable. If they don't go for it, then they've just wasted their money and bit of your time, but it's all a learning experience for you anyway.

I'm thinking more like, $3k Jason

Now THAT is a good idea. I'm throwing away lead after lead after lead that would make for a perfectly good listing. I've tried the route of signing up marginal cash deals and found selling the property too difficult. But... referring that out to a realtor could work. I know there are agents out there who work solely on a referral basis, their marketing brings in leads which they refer out to other agents to work, and they get 25% of the commission when the deal closes. Since a broker can't pay me a referral fee without violating his license, how would I get paid? Release fee on an option perhaps?

LOL I'll try that Well, 15 replies in the last 3 days to my ads...all cash, nothing close to a flip deal either.

Hey the noobs need the fear of god put into them lest they think this business is easy I appreciate everything you said and logically it makes sense. But I haven't found it to be the case here. It's true that an above-average number of new homeowners are in trouble, however in my experience they're in trouble because they have an above-average percentage of crappy high interest loans, loans I can't make any money on even when they're open to a take over. I think I've covered every demographic pretty well and haven't found any to be more open to a creative solution than the 'kissing frogs' approach. Which is why I'm voicing my frustration at the inability to talk solely or at least mostly to motivated sellers. One thing I hadn't figured out until today is why I get so irritated with sellers and not with all the tire-kicking can't-afford-a-pack-of-gum tenant/buyers out there. Today I realized what it is...when a T/B can't qualify they aren't jerks about it. When a seller doesn't qualify they almost always ARE jerks about it. I really need to improve my qualifying process...on the phone it's not bad, but somehow that doesn't translate very well online.

Jason, notice how I carefully left cold calling out of that list?

Realtors? Useless. Newspapers? Useless. Business cards? Useless. Flyers? Useless. Postcards? Eh... Networking? Useless. Mortgage Brokers? Useless. Attorneys? Useless. Don't get me wrong, I get plenty of leads, they're just well...useless. Arrogant, argumentative, self-righteous, pricks....I mean sellers. If only there was a way to talk to motivated sellers only!

Do you have anything to lose? A few minutes posting ads on craigslist maybe? Might as well do it. If nothing else you should at least get a couple of names of buyers.

When in doubt, tie it up and let the market speak.

That's been my experience. This business is about sorting the wheat from the chaff so to speak. Putting systems in place to make that process as efficient as possible is probably the best place to spend your effort, rather than trying to find greener pastures, or attempting to do a better job of educating and selling.