What Should You Do If You’re Unable To Reach The Homeowner?

If you have skip traced a homeowner and still are unable to reach them, we highly recommend that you pull a relationship report. Here at Skip Genie, relationship reports (the phone numbers of the relatives & likely associates of the homeowner) are WAY underutilized, but they can be so important that they can literally make the difference between getting a deal and not getting a deal. When should you pull relationship reports? Every time you call the homeowner you get a full mailbox You get sent to voicemail every time you call the homeowner The homeowner doesn’t get back to you after you’ve left a voicemail and sent them a text message You couldn’t get a working phone number for the homeowner The homeowner is deceased If you are trying to acquire a property with a lot of equity in it, then you shouldn’t hesitate to pull full reports on the homeowner’s relatives so that you can keep making calls until someone gets you in touch with who is in control of that property so that you can make an offer. Why relationship reports are neglected The reason why relationship reports are neglected in real estate skip tracing so much is because there is an extra cost in pulling them, but because these reports can literally be the difference between success and failure, they’re worth every penny. What usually happens when you call a homeowner’s relatives? When you start calling the relatives of the homeowner and begin telling them why you’re calling and what property you’re interested in, their relatives will usually contact the homeowner for you and give them your contact information so that they can get back to you. The homeowner may send you a text message, or they may call you back on the phone. Even if they tell you that they are not interested in selling the property, at least you can cross that property off your list and focus your energy elsewhere. Use relationship reports to leverage competition It’s also important to keep in mind how much competition there is for each and every property you want. Lots of investors are trying to acquire the same properties, but many of them are not pulling relationship reports when they can’t get in touch with the homeowner. This means if you pull relationship reports, you’re going an extra step beyond most of your competitors – which gives you a HUGE advantage. Relationship reports are easy with Skip Genie Skip Genie makes pulling relationship reports as easy as pushing a button (literally). Our software is by far the easiest and fastest way available to get phone numbers for a homeowners relatives. In fact, we have even developed calling scripts that were created by an REI sales professional for REI professionals. These scripts also specifically tell you what to say when you are talking to the relatives of a homeowner, so we’ve made the process of contacting the relatives of any homeowner as easy and painless as possible. Pull relationship reports consistently You may have a lot of leads you’ve been trying to contact but can’t get ahold of the person you need to speak to so that you can close the deal. Why not make a list of these properties and run relationship reports on the homeowners so that you can increase and multiply the likelihood of getting in touch with the person you need to speak with so that you can collect some more assignment fees? If you’re serious about using skip tracing to close more deals, you should make relationship reports a consistent part of your business. This means that every time you run a list with us and discover the homeowner is deceased, you should take an extra step and get the phone numbers of the deceased homeowners relatives. Skip tracing for real estate If you haven’t subscribed to Skip Genie yet and are interested in making skip tracing a part of your marketing, click here to see our plans and pricing. If you take skip tracing seriously and cover all of the bases, it’s not a matter of if you’ll close more deals, it’s a matter of when.

Dealing With Squatters – This Squatter Improved The Property

We had found a property with about $40,000 worth of tax issues that was worth $90,000 to $100,000. At some point it was a deceased vacant property. We contacted the homeowner, and they were going to just deed the property over to us. Her and her brother had grown up in the home, and they had rented the property out for awhile but they couldn’t afford the taxes. We were glad they were willing to just  deed the property over , but we told them we would give them something.  We needed to walk the property so we pulled up to the house and surprisingly the yard was well kept. The door was locked so we went to the garage door and knocked and this guy who was in his 20’s answered and asked if he could help us. We knew he was a squatter, but we didn’t call him out on it. Instead, we told him that we were going to buy that property. We knew we showed up completely out of the blue, so we didn’t ask him to leave right away. We just told him, “Look we’re buying this house and we need to get in here in the next couple of days”. He told us that wouldn’t be a problem, so the next thing we did was ask if we could walk the property. He cooperated and went with us into the backyard, where there was a pink playground. It turned out this guy was living at the property with his wife and 5 year old daughter. At this point we really wanted to help them. We weren’t going to kick them out of the property with a 5 year old daughter living there, so we tried to owner finance the home to them but they couldn’t afford the payments. So, we paid a deposit for them to move to an apartment. The homeowner had initially gotten angry when we told them that a squatter was living in her house, but the squatter actually improved the property. He had painted the house and done other improvements to it that made the home even more marketable. We gave each of the heirs about $250 to $500 a piece and the taxes were paid at closing. We made about $15,000 dollars on this deal, and the squatters were cooperative with us the whole time. A key takeaway from this deal is that all we needed to do was skip trace the homeowner and get them on the phone… they were willing to just deed the property over to us. It was that easy, but there were still a few obstacles involved with moving the property. In this case it was squatters and the discomfort we had with just kicking them out of the property when they didn’t have anywhere else to go. If we had to do that, then we wouldn’t have taken the deal, so we were glad to have helped them get into a new apartment by paying their deposit. Every property you’ll ever acquire will have its own story, and many of these stories will involve people who need help. If you make it a goal to be in the helping business as much as you’re in the business of buying houses for cash, it will do great things for both your business and the people you help along the way. Our weekly coaching calls are peppered with stories about how specific deals were closed with their own unique set of obstacles. You can learn a lot from other investor’s stories that you couldn’t learn from conventional coaching programs. If you’re interested in skip tracing for deals and learning about how to get unstuck from stopping points that often get in the way of your assignment fees, click here to see our plans and pricing.