Originally posted by Clifton Jones:
Brett, your best bet when dealing with realtors is to meet quite a few of them and just be honest with them. State that you are an investor who is interested in working with them on purchasing properties.
We work with realtors in our business. One of our requirements when working with the realtor that we state right up front is that we handle the negotiations. We will not allow somebody else to handle the negotiations on our deals, for the most part, because most of the negotiators are not conversant with how to negotiate the deals we submit.
As an investor, you submit offers that are significantly lower the fair market value. Due to this, you would also submit reasons justifying the offer, such as repair lists, crime rate, sexual offender lists, police reports, anything that can cause the lender to accept your offer. Do you think that the typical negotiator, who is usually a title agency or the realtor themselves, would understand or even think it was worth it to submit your offer?
If the realtor is comfortable with this, then that is a realtor that is a potential candidate for your team. That does not mean that you should work with them. Once you have established that they accept the requirements you have (not necessarily the negotiation issue, but all issues), then you need to ask them about the properties they closed in the last year, 9 months, 6 months, month, etc. Establish whether they are go-getters, or if they wait for deals to come to them.
If they wait for the deals, then I would not want them on my team. I want active go-getters, somebody who actively markets properties, hold open houses, etc. Those are the realtors you want to work with.
How do you get to the seller thru the realtor? Are these listings that come to your realtor or do they go on MLS? I'm not sure I'm asking this questions correctly, I had a nice conversation yesterday with a realtor, explained everything I had to offer him, he was on board. They we got to the part about how he gets me in contact with the seller & I was stumped.
