how do you screen short sale calls?
Real Estate Investor · Glendale, AZ · Member since 2009 · 134 posts · 5 votes
I have a certain list of 1500 homeowners that I will be sending out over a 6 day period starting soon. I'm anticipating receiving between 35-60 calls within a two week period. That averages out to be about 3-5 calls per callable day (not assuming calls on Sunday). I'm not sure how to handle the calls as I've heard that the average call can be around 15-20 minutes. How are you screening calls to assure you aren't on the phone all day? Are you just letting the calls go to VM and letting the message educate the caller to your service? Do you use a calling service to answer the calls? What is the best method other than actually answering the call (not an option) or hiring someone to (not an option at this time)?
If you are not willing to answer your telephone then success is not an option...
Short Sale Script
1. It looks like you owe more on this house than it is worth…do you agree? ________________________
2. You do want to sell your house, right? Yes/no (great )
3. You do have an interest in NOT having a foreclosure on your record right? yes/no (good!)
4.If you could sell your house …….and avoid foreclosure ……..all at no cost to you…would that work for you? Yes/no (excellent)
Have you heard of a short sale? Yes/no
IF YES OR NO: Well basically in the short sale process, you agree to sell your home to me… You avoid foreclosure…… and there is no cost to you. You can remain in the house with out making your mortgage payment…. which will save you a lot of money, … and best part is this is all okay with the lender until the sale is complete, okay? GET RESPONSE!
Great , I need you to come to my office to fill out a purchase agreement so that we may take over this burden for you. I have (time) and (time) tomorrow, which time is better for you? If none…agree to a time asap______________
If they chose: Great well (name) I look forward to seeing you (day) at (time).One last question…. Do you anyone else with a similar situation I may be able to help? If yes get info/ If no: Can I call you in a couple of days to see if you could come up with anybody? _____ (Great)
If out of town seller: Well _______ what I need to do is get you a purchase agreement so that we may take this burden from you. Call me when you receive it to go over it. I need you to sign it and get it back to me today so that I may present it to the lender. You want to sell me your house and I want to buy it. I’m going to get this over to the lender. All you’re agreeing to is to sell to me. Any reference to fees are all incurred by the bank. This negotiating price will look ridiculous to you but it is just a starting point for the bank. As you know……. I am an investor, and this is all just standard procedure. You do understand that, right? Get response Great, Remember to call me just as soon as you receive this and we will go over it together.
One last question…. Do you anyone else with a similar situation I may be able to help? If yes get info/ If no: Well if you come across please give them my information so that I may help them as well.
Hello Caleb! By "sending" do you mean through snail email or email? I direct my homeowners to a form on my site that they can fill out in order to screen them. I'm currently working on a new form to give more automated responses to the homeowner if they qualify for a short sale or not as a way to save time; however, I would recommend doing your own property valuations based on comps rather than relying on appraisers.
Sounds like you have a potentially big catch coming up, the first call can eat up alot of your time, but if you get the big questions out of the way (missed payments/what hardship they're facing/recent house valuation) and ask for them to do a little homework for the other details (mortgages/financial statement/etc) on a form you will email them, it maximizes your time. I'm having the responses fill in a pre-programmed spreadsheet that qualifies them for a short sale.
You can do all of this with Google docs, which has easy to make forms for your homeowner that are connected to a spreadsheet that only you can see. Depending on how familiar you are with excel, it can increase your efficiency when you don't have the luxury of being on call or outsourcing to a call center.
If you are not willing to answer your telephone then success is not an option...
Short Sale Script
1. It looks like you owe more on this house than it is worth…do you agree? ________________________
2. You do want to sell your house, right? Yes/no (great )
3. You do have an interest in NOT having a foreclosure on your record right? yes/no (good!)
4.If you could sell your house …….and avoid foreclosure ……..all at no cost to you…would that work for you? Yes/no (excellent)
Have you heard of a short sale? Yes/no
IF YES OR NO: Well basically in the short sale process, you agree to sell your home to me… You avoid foreclosure…… and there is no cost to you. You can remain in the house with out making your mortgage payment…. which will save you a lot of money, … and best part is this is all okay with the lender until the sale is complete, okay? GET RESPONSE!
Great , I need you to come to my office to fill out a purchase agreement so that we may take over this burden for you. I have (time) and (time) tomorrow, which time is better for you? If none…agree to a time asap______________
If they chose: Great well (name) I look forward to seeing you (day) at (time).One last question…. Do you anyone else with a similar situation I may be able to help? If yes get info/ If no: Can I call you in a couple of days to see if you could come up with anybody? _____ (Great)
If out of town seller: Well _______ what I need to do is get you a purchase agreement so that we may take this burden from you. Call me when you receive it to go over it. I need you to sign it and get it back to me today so that I may present it to the lender. You want to sell me your house and I want to buy it. I’m going to get this over to the lender. All you’re agreeing to is to sell to me. Any reference to fees are all incurred by the bank. This negotiating price will look ridiculous to you but it is just a starting point for the bank. As you know……. I am an investor, and this is all just standard procedure. You do understand that, right? Get response Great, Remember to call me just as soon as you receive this and we will go over it together.
One last question…. Do you anyone else with a similar situation I may be able to help? If yes get info/ If no: Well if you come across please give them my information so that I may help them as well.
Agreed, Michael. Homeowners won't be able to see the value in your business if you're not willing to even talk to them. Caleb, can you please explain why talking to a potential client that gives you business is not even an option?
Be careful--in our state you can get in big trouble telling homeowners that they can remain in the house without making their mortgage payment while going through the short sale process. Major non-profit and consumer groups mark this statement as a red flag for scammer activity, so at the risk of seeming like an illegitimate business, it might be wise to withhold that statement.
I suspect you're overestimating your response rate. I think you'll be doing good if you get 15 calls, and probably less than that from this first round. If you mail these folks every two weeks for the next three months, you might hit the kind of response rate you want.
I'm with Michael here. Not answering the phone is not an option. Some of the few callers you get will hang up. You might try a message like "Hi this is Caleb with xxx. I'm helping another client with their property. Please leave you number and I'll get back to you within 30 minutes". If you have a web site, you can mention that, but at least some of your callers will be unwilling to do that.
An alternative is a live answering service like patlive. You can provide them a script and have them collect information.
I think you certainly will get calls every day of the week including Sunday. And in the evenings.
Releaf_OC.. Out here in California the lender wont accept a payment, if they do the foreclosure must stop... So although that statement seems really large and helpful they get to anyway... Although I also have a policy of 90 days... And if rented the tenant must vacate.
Wheelhouse YES I get contracts signed irrespective of paperwrk... After all in California we have to give a 5 day rescission period... They use that five days to bundle up stuff however most of the time the seller is aware of the documents I need from them for a successful shortsale... If they have Internet we send them to out web site and they can see the info we will need...
And Jon is correct you may not get that many calls. Set yourself up a Skype account and have it answer the calls at the very least and skype can send you the callers message to be played back from your cell.
These sellers are looking for their lost keys... Once they find them they stop looking so when you make them feel like you are their key to success then they're done looking. If not then they will call one of the other many people trying to help them...
Good luck
Caleb,
I'm with everyone else. Answer calls, determine the hardship and ask them how soon do they want to sell...That is usually the line that tells me if I'm wasting my time or not. I do get a lot of calls where they just don't know what they want to do...I move on. The one line that has helped me is "How soon do you want to sell?" The answer to that usually let's me know how serious they are.
The next step is follow up and get to them ASAP.
I've run into problems where I didn't qualify them well on the phone and they said they were going to meet me then suddenly I didn't get to them soon enough and BAM, it went no where. Even if I do qualify them and they are ready to sign on the dotted line on the phone, I try not to give them too much time between the phone call and the meeting.
This is where I am still struggling, so I'm trying to work on it...it all goes back to qualifying them before you hang up.
Good luck
I never said that I didn't want to answer the phone. I'm interested in knowing how you guys handle all the calls.
Why don't you try www.patlive.com
They charge $100.00 month plus $1.00 a minute for a live operator. All you need is to provide them with a script. They will send you and email with all the info you need.
That would give you more time to do things that make you the most money.
I've tried Pat Live and another service... The reality is that you are the best person to answer the telephone...
I teach having a second cell phone activated so you know when it rings it is a money opportunity...
Happy house hunting
Michael
While I agree that you are the best person to answer the phone I also know the value of leveraging your time.
Where is your time best spent? Looking at more deal and signing more contracts or answering phones of unmotivated sellers.
Serg
I get that too.. Time management is extremely important...
However if new what are you doing anyway? Answer the telephone..
Or waste 100 bucks and let someone who isn't economically attached to the outcome take a call... The only time you should let a service take your calls is when you have consistently booked 3 appointments a day with reality land sellers.. 10-2-4
IMHO
Michael
If you are new, you really need to answer the phone calls yourself.
This will get you to a place where you can talk to anyone about what is going/ planning to happen. You really need to be able perform this action yourself. If and this is a big if, things get to the point that you need someone to answers all the calls, then you can search out help at that point.
Caleb,
I am with the others. Based on the math of 3-5 calls a day you will be on the phone 90 minutes. That is nothing. When a person calls they are trying to find out why they should do business with you. Foreclosure is a scary thing in their eyes. All they know about you is something on a piece of paper.
Now on the other hand if your marketing drives them to get some information about you, then drive them to a 800# voice mail.
4% response rate is pretty high. Especially for a group that is hiding from the mail and phone.
Michael gave you a good script. But mix it up and build reporie with these people and I like the last line what Michael said about "Who do you know" I am going to swipe that one
Thanks all of you guys for your input on this thread,learned a bit from this.....