All Forum Posts by: Lafi S.

Although I personally have not used them...I know of a few investors that have...
http://www.greatimpressionshomestaging.com/
They concentrate mainly on Bergen County so expect to spend a few bucks.

I can also recommend an RE agent that does home staging for rehabbers. She is an agent with Keller Williams realty in Clifton, NJ and I've seen some of her work. Feel free to message me for her contact info. Good Luck!

Congrats Patrick and good luck!

Wayne Brooks I try my best to flip to end buyers or rehab. Like I said I've only been doing this consistently for 6 months so most of my deals are still cooking, but I did 2 of them before that were home runs. In both scenarios the expired listing worked to our advantage b/c it shows the bank that their pricing was unrealistic. In one case, the BPO agent never even went inside, and in the other case, the realtor never even got an offer so the bank didn't establish a value. Bottom line is short sale expireds work!

Welcome Alpesh, some of the best deals I've done were in JC Heights and I bought my first rental unit there! Good Luck!

Kevin Yoo
I get leads calling in every week. In February I was able to put 6 short sales under contract, March was 3, and 2 this month strictly from this lead source.

2nd question: I wouldn't make that assumption, with short sales there could be so many reasons why the deal expired. Also, the agent isn't "taking on the listing." They are just connecting us with the seller and we handle the negotiations, value dispute with the bank etc and if we close they collect the commission. I look at it as paying a referral fee just to get me in touch with the seller and since the listing expired they usually don't have many objections.

Not sure about your 3rd question. You can check MLS for withdrawn listings, some MLS will be more advanced and could give you that kind of detail, others won't.

Gary Parker Yes that is the case sometimes. But it doesn't stop me from sending the mailers or contacting the agent. It's a good way to at least establish the relationship. And if the seller/agent doesn't do business with you right then and there they might contact you later on down the line.

Hey John, what city are you buying this property in? There's a ton of cash flow deals in North Jersey if you're looking in the right places.

Thanks Dev Horn , I definitely will!

Hello all,

It's been such a long time since I actively contributed to BP so I thought I could get this going again by sharing my marketing plan for consistently getting short sales in my market. I hope some of the marketing experts can help critique it and some of the newbies can use this as a way to get more business if they are currently involved in short sales or are looking to be. Over the past 6 months I have been doing this on a regular basis and it has worked out really well for me so here goes...

Expired Short Sale Listings: This has been my #1 source of getting short sale deals for the last 6-8months. All you need is access to your local MLS, and/or sign up for an expired listing provider such as landvoice or the theredx. My expired leads come to me in an email every single day so all I do is open it up, read through the agent remarks and identify which ones are short sales and which aren't. After sorting through everything I cross check the addresses with the local tax records and change addresses if necessary. Once this is done I upload the list onto Click2Mail.com and proceed with a 5 step direct mail campaign that looks like this:

1) Flyer
2) Letter
3) Postcard
4) Postcard
5) Postcard

All of these are approximately 10-15 days apart.

Finally, I upload the list onto google docs to track the results. Now if you work with real estate agents on short sales, I highly recommend taking that extra step and contacting the agent directly. I cut straight to the point, tell them I am an investor that buys short sales and now that the listing expired my company decided to contact the sellers directly through marketing campaign. I also tell them that if they are interested in working together, they can help make the connection with the seller and still keep their full commission by working with us. Sometimes the agents are sick and tired of short sales and don't want anything to do with it, and sometimes they are willing to play ball, either way it just gives us an additional edge at maximizing our return on the mailers and ultimately getting the deal.

The upside: This entire process short of contacting the agents can be completely outsourced! The seller has already expressed interest in doing a short sale so that whole aspect of explaining it to them is taking out of the process. I put together a training guide and sent it off to a VA on Odesk and now this is being done every single day the leads come into my inbox.

The downside: Can get expensive, and a LOT of return mailers.

Hope this helps, and if any of the more experienced members here would like to chime in with their critique I would be happy to hear it!

Hello,

I actually thought about doing this similar to a realtor's "JUST SOLD." The idea would be "we just bought the house in your neighborhood, if you know anyone else that wants to sell please call us for a referral"

Any thoughts on this?