Anyone use a Buyers Agent to offer on REO's?

[Jeff Warner]

I'm curious how many people use a Buyers Agent to flip REO's instead of going directly through the Listing Agent? If so, are you having success?

I'm NOT trying to go the route of making 100's of lowball offers and burning out a realtor...I know a buyers agent that is ok with wholesaling and basically just wants to get deals done. Before talking to him I was curious if anyone has had success going that route.

Jeff

[Curtis Gabhart]

Ok since my previous post here about listing or selling agents and me harping on using the listing agent I have bought and closed on a deal through a buyers agent.

B U T .... that buyers agent was a listing agent who I met through cold calling listing agents (he was a listing agent who I called about some of the properties he had for sale).

I find a lot of deals doing what I call (I am sure others call it this to) circle prospecting.

I locate an area I either want to buy in, currently own property in, selling property in, etc. and pull up all the listings in the area.

I pull up all the active & pending for a similar bedroom mix. i.e 2/1 & 2/2 baths, 3/1 and 3/2 etc.

Let's use pending as an example since it is my favorite for finding deals off the MLS and building relationships with agents who get good deals.

I specifically pull up the bedrooms so the 2 and 3 bedrooms don't get mixed up. I do this because I like to sort the lists by price from lowest to highest and start calling the lowest price first.

If I have the 3 bedrooms mixed up with the 2 bedrooms it makes it more difficult to sort quickly.

By sorting by bedrooms only (and approx sq. footage) I can see real quick how much cheaper the lowest priced 2 bedroom is than the average 2 bedroom.

So back to pendings.... I usually will find a bunch of properties that on the surface I would have offered on but are currently under contract.

I start with these pending first. I like to start my "pitch" by letting them know that I am an investor and just got done watching a carlton sheets infomercial last night at 2 AM and wanted to buy there pending property for zero down and get cash back at closing.

Once the tension gets really thick I then tell them I am totally kidding (which they are relieved about and are now smiling most of the time) I then go on to tell them my criteria (which is very specific) and that it looks like I just missed out on the deal they have that is pending and am wondering if there is any chance it may fall out.

At first they tell me it's solid until I let them know that I ALWAYS buy through whomever tells me about a deal first and sell from that same person usually within 30 days me buying and rehabing it.

I follow up with a template email letting them know my criteria and a link to my website (to hopefully establish some credibility) and then follow up on a regular basis to see if 1) if the deal I originally called about fell out 2) if they have anything new coming to market, any price reductions or know of any other agents that have good deals.

This leads me to my buyers agent (wow that was a long winded way to get to the actual subject eh?). What I find happens is that if an agent feels you are credible, won't waste their time, can close they will call you on deals. AND if they are good listing agents who sell a lot of property they have good relationships with other who sell a lot of property and these agents have an inner circle going a lot of times where they give each other more insight than they would to other agents.

So moral of the story - Listing agents are the way to go in most situations (if you are not experienced I would find a good buyers agent you can trust) and many times they turn into your buying agents because of deals they run across from their colleagues.

I hope this made sense and apologize if I rambled but it is late and I don't have the time or energy to re-edit this post so it makes more sense but hope some people get the point.