Cold Calling Absentee Owners

[Jarell Stokes]

Does anyone cold call absentee owner? I have a list of absentee owners, but no money to send letters yet. So I was thinking just look up their numbers and call them, but i'm not sure exactly what to say.

[Eric Renney]

I do this all the time and have gotten a few deals from doing so. All I tell the owner is that I noticed their home is vacant and am wondering what their plans are with the property. Usually they are quite receptive to this because I don't sound like a sales call. I then let them know that if they are interested in selling, I would love to give them a fair offer for the property. If the owner is absent and the house is trashed or in bad shape that's a pretty good sign that they either don't care about it or they can't afford to do anything about it. 

Alot of these people are underwater and haven't made a payment for years. In my experience so far. The hardest part I've found is finding a phone number that actually gets to the owner.