Pre-foreclosure Letters

[William Nagle]

Good morning BP community,

My wife and I are trying to establish a niche in the pre-foreclosure space (i.e. trying to get our first deal) and we are having a slight disagreement about how to contact homeowners via letter.

My wife is very good about finding a lot of personal information (i.e. family history, interests, education) about a homeowner via Facebook, Linkedin, etc. She uses this information to write as personalized and sincere of a letter to try to connect with the home owner to make us stand out from other investors and try to make them feel comfortable reaching out to us. We only use information that is directly related to the homeowners as we do not want to be overbearing or cross a line. A typical example is that we see that one of the homeowners is a serviceman and we acknowledge that detail and thank them for their service or that one of the owners has recently deceased and we offer our condolences.

I can see the potential power of this, but I can not help being the devil's advocate to this approach. I am almost leaning towards sending a general and "cookie-cutter" letter to these homeowners because I don't know how I would feel receiving a letter from a complete stranger with some personal details about my life and family. I do not want us coming off as "stalkerish".

What is this community's opinion about these two sides? What other advise does anyone have about reaching out to distressed home owners?

Thank you all in advance for your help!

[Rick H.]

Mail, call and knock.

While you spend inordinate time with spouse debating the approach, others are taking action. 

Send the letters. Don't worry too much about customizing yet. The problem with your first attempts at copyrighting is that we superimpose our erroneous perceptions on others and think we know what bothers them. Tip: it's not what you think.

Seriously, get the mail out, lower your expectations of callers, and ask questions from those callers you do speak to that reveals their longer term plans and show them how, with your help, they can reach their objectives. Also, goals and objectives do not mean the same thing.