Pre-foreclosure list criteria: date of filing or date of auction?

[Michael Finkelshteyn]

Hello BP,

I am trying find out what's more effective for pre-foreclosure list criteria:

 Date of foreclosure filing or date of pending auction?

I would think the auction date has a sense of urgency whereas the the date of filing may result in the homeowner putting off the foreclosure dealings until later.

[Jay Hinrichs]

@Michael Finkelshteyn  prior to the new laws in Oregon and Washington and CA regarding equity stripping and pre foreclosures.. I did quite a bit of this.

and through a lot of trial and error we came to the conclusion that we would only door knock and we would only do it no more than 10 days before the sale.  With 90% or more of our deals being closed within 72 hours of the sale.

Here was our thought process.

1. if you have a NOD in our market Portlandia OR as the person being foreclosed on you will receive between 100 and 200 direct mail pieces from various and sundry folks realtors mortgage brokers etc. during the process.

2. If your in denial you take no action on any of the folks during the 5 month foreclosure gestation period.. and now you have mandatory mediation etc. so lots of time for them to work it out.

So what we decided is we only wanted to deal with highly motivated folks and they usually get highly motivated on Monday when their house is going to be sold on Wed. And of course we only dealt with those with equity further narrowing the list.. So my team I had 6 of them 3 boy girl door knocker teams.. we door knocked every NOD that was still live 10 days before the sale..

NOw this worked because we had cash and could take care of any balance or arrears out of ready cash.. we needed no loans etc.. so that cut our competition down drastically.

So it was always a cluster having to hire drivers to drive cashiers checks up to Seattle to the trustee the night before the sale or the morning of..

I bought probably 200 plus homes this way over an 8 year period..

If you mail only and if your in a hot market its a true crap shoot.  For fun I would call a few of the folks that sent the yellow letters and or whatever canned letter.. as many homewoners would leave them stacked on the counter 50 to 100 of them.. most I talked to would stumble bumble they had no clue what to do or say.. and or I was the first call they ever got in 6 months of doing it and thousands on direct mail and frankly had given up..  :) It was actually quite comical.. in those days the number one canned letter was the one..

Were the letter writer was pulling heartstrings explaining how they also lost a home in foreclosure know how bad this is they are just good Christians out to help people blah blah balh.. I came to the realization that most pre foreclosure buyers for whatever reason have also lost a home.. Or maybe it was just not true.   But if your a home owner and you get 100 letters and 30 of them say the exact same thing can you imagine how they think

then we show up at the door and then I come in and Close... my close rate was better than 95% ... and sometimes I advised them to file BK if they really thought they could re orginze their lifes.  it was too late to list it or get a loan they new that.