What is a "Free Foreclosure List"?
by John Occhi, Hemet REALTOR®
Mission Grove Realty
I have to hand it to my fellow REALTORS®, they certainly know how to market, if nothing else. Some would argue that is a REALTORS® most important job - marketing - or getting the word out.
The change in the market of 2007 has brought all sorts of people into the foreclosure and preforeclosure niche of selling real estate.
One of the latest techniques that REALTORS® are using is offering a "Free List of Foreclosures". OK, I suppose I could see the value in that, if it was legitimate.
One of the brokers in town has a sign out in front of their office with those exact words on it. I was talking with a friend of mine - outside of the business. Actually my friend was asking me what that was all about, and to be honest I wasn't real sure just what they were providing.
So a couple of days later, my friend gets back to me and says he went in and asked for the list. Well, after a 45 minute drilling on what his objectives were and the gathering of his personal contact information, they finally gave him a NOD list - from last month.
They did take the time to explain what the list was and how to read it - with all of the codes and column headings that looked like Greek to the non real estate professional. The list was 24 pages and had properties from one end of Riverside County, CA to the other. He was told he could look this over and preview any of the homes by driving by and if he wanted to see the inside, they would try and arrange it.
These properties aren't even for sale. They are preforeclosure and many of these homeowners are struggling to keep their homes - not sell them. Certainly these homeowners don't appreciate people knocking on their door. That can be very dangerous in some parts of Riverside County.
Now get this, the REALTOR® who gave him the list has called twice in the last 3 days to see if he found what he was looking for. It turns out they had my friend sign an in-house form that says they would not disclose this list to any outside persons and that if my friend wanted to make an offer on any of these homes that he had to go though them, as they are now considered the procuring cause.
So, Anything They Can Do...I can do Better
I pulled out my laptop and shoed my friend how I have access to this data updated three times a day - fight thereon my computer. I show him how I scan the property and let the computer select the properties that meet my criteria - first by zip code, property size, lot size, bedroom count, if it has a pool or not and almost anything else I want to know except what color the kitchen sink is.
So we go through several thousand listings from the past month, up to that afternoon and narrow the criteria down to about 15 properties that have the potential for what my friend is looking for. I map them out and we do drive-bys of all 15 in less than an hour and narrow the list down to 3 or 4 that he believes his wife would like - based on nothing more than the curb appeal and the filtering of the list.
After my friend did his drive by with his wife, she agreed that she could live in any one of them. Now at this point, nothing is guaranteed, but they want me to try and buy one of those four homes. So, I wrote a personal letter to each of the four homeowners and mailed them. I will give them until Wednesday, and if I have not heard from them, I will take the next step and knock on a few doors to see if any would entertain a short sale offer to help them out of their problems. Who knows, it just might fly - and if it doesn't I have a buyer ready to go and will continue to work with me - not because we are friends - that only got him in the door - but because I provide a service and I'm not talking about an outdated list on NPOD properties and sent driving aimlessly.
I think I have a buy coming up, very soon.
Now Have a Blessed Day,
John Occhi, Hemet REALTOR®
Mission Grove Realty
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