In Real Estate, It´s About Your Seller, Not You…
By David Whisnant, JD
http://www.4-real-estate-investing.com
I did an interview recently on the phone with a real estate investing club. They asked me to give a single powerful pointer to help their members increase their success in getting potential sellers to agree to sell them a home.
I cover this topic in depth in my real estate investing materials. This single idea has made more money for me and gotten sellers to agree to sell me their homes for less money. Here it is in a nutshell.
ue0!>When buying a home, price is only one factor. The other factor is how easy, convenient, and turn-key that you can make the sales experience for your sellers. If you can offer more service than your competitors, you will beat them almost every time. This holds true even if they are offering a seller more money than you are.
While many investors turn the real estate investing business into a commodity where the seller’s only way to decide which offer to take is based on price alone, I offer a reasonable price and tack on some great extras that are worth a great deal to my sellers, but are cheap for me to provide.
Examples from my personal deals:
1) A single mother with three kids had a house that was a wreck. She worked long hours and didn’t have any free time. Part of our offer included taking the house “as is,” so that she wouldn’t have to make any repairs. It also included moving boxes of various sizes, and we agreed to mow the grass for her until the closing date so that she would have more time to work on the move.
2) A seller in foreclosure was more worried about what would happen to him than the money he would make from the sale. We paid him a fair price AND paid for his rent in a really nice duplex that I owned. I also agreed to handle the move for him. I supplied the labor and the trucks for his move. That meant more to him than another $20,000 in the sales price that a competitor was offering, and we got the deal.
3) An elderly seller that was moving into a retirement home needed to sell, but was totally frustrated by what Realtors had told her. They urged her to make repairs on the property, move all of the extra belongings out that she could into storage, and repaint the interior and exterior. I told her that I would buy for $X. She would not have to do anything to the house in terms of repairs or further work, and she could leave any items in the house that she did not want and we would dispose of them for her. Her daughter later thanked me for this. We paid a fair price for the home, but addressed her needs so closely with our offer that accepting it was easy for her.
Thus, instead of talking about yourself and how wonderful you are as an investor, spend time listening to what your sellers need. If they don’t tell you, just ask them. Offer services instead of money. You’ll make more profit and the peace of mind to them makes it well worth it from their perspective.
Thus, to have more success as a real estate investor when meeting sellers across from their kitchen table, put their needs first and listen to what they want to get out of the transaction first.
Until next time, take care, and good luck in your real estate investing endeavors.