Short sale gurus say a lot of wild things sometimes, but some of their methods they use to get their short sales approved are really nuts. I hear about secret spreadsheets, magic phrases to speed up the approvals, and inside contacts who guarantee to put your files on the fast track. Most of it is just ridiculous.

Hundreds of successful short sale deals later, we’re pretty confident that success has nothing to do with secret tricks and sudden approval. It has a lot more to do with targeting your efforts to overcome the challenges of short sale negotiation.

If you want to be successful at negotiating short sales, it’s really all about understanding what lenders are thinking during those negotiations. They’re thinking about which course of action will cost them the least amount of money. If they see any way to collect that debt, they will do it. If they see any need to avoid a long-term bad debt, they will generally move in that direction. Lenders know how much it costs to continue to collect debts and maintain REOs. They know exactly how much money they lose when they have to take possession of a foreclosed property.

There’s no baloney about achieving real success in a short sale negotiation. Here are my ten best tips for making the most of your deal.

1) Call the loss mitigation department after you submit each complete short sale package, make sure they got it, and ask for the name of the loss mitigator it was assigned to. They don’t like to admit it, but lenders do lose things once in a while. And if that package doesn’t get assigned to a specific person, your offer won’t be considered.

2) Don’t give up. With all the foreclosures being processed lately, the loss mitigation departments are swamped. Pleasant persistence is the only way to get past this roadblock. If you don’t find the information you need, call them back once every two or three days until you do. You don’t have to be a pest and leave a message every time you call. Just say “thank you” and call them again another day.

3) Find out who owns the loan (FNMA, FDMC, FHA, VA, conventional). Make sure to ask the mitigator who owns the loan and record this in your notes. Trust me - it will make negotiating much easier. Each loan investor has their own idea of what they will and won’t accept from a short sale.

4) Summarize your offer for the loss mitigator and ask them to get an interior appraisal or BPO as soon as possible.

5) Manage the BPO effectively.

6) Make sure you know what’s on title by pulling a title report after the BPO has been done. You don’t want to get to closing and find liens you didn’t know about.

7) Ask the bank about the number for the BPO. This is self-explanatory. Just ask. Sometimes they won’t tell you, but sometimes they will. And then you know you’ll pay about 90 percent of that number.
If the bank will not tell you the BPO, you have to get them to make a counteroffer. (Most of the time, their counteroffer equals the BPO figure anyway.)

9) Submit your own counteroffers with additional proof to validate your offer (days on market from the MLS listing, repair estimates, low comps, negative articles on the area or city).

10) Remind the loss mitigator that you can close quickly with cash.

We’re not selling any magic potions, and we’re not selling any hyped-up baloney. The truth is much more powerful. Lenders don’t normally view short sales as their best option, but short sales aren’t their worst option either. All you have to do is convince the loss mitigator that your solution makes the best financial sense for them. If you’re ready to educate yourself, develop a good attitude, and be persistent, you can successfully negotiate a short sale.

Want to learn more about conducting a short sale negotiation? Visit the Strategic Real Estate Coach website and treat yourself to the most current information on loss mitigation in America!

Sometime in the past few years, the word “partner” has become a very popular verb, especially in terms of doing business. Think “interdisciplinary collaboration” or “building a strategic alliance.” Any way you say it, partnering is just sound business practice. When you’re a small business, you can’t afford to do everything yourself, and you can’t afford to hire everyone you’ll need to fill in the gaps.

From a real estate investing perspective, we’ve learned that there are huge benefits from thinking like a team leader - even if you’re the only one who works in your office. Partnering in this context doesn’t mean you take on an actual business partner. Rather, you’re working to get to know people that may be able to fill in the blanks for you on certain projects, and you’re trying to build a cooperative mentality between the people you already know.

Imagine yourself as a baseball coach. You know which people you need on your team: pitchers, catchers, infielders, and outfielders. But you have to work with other people as well. If you want to win games, you have to collaborate with the scouts, the rest of the coaching staff, the administrative people, and even the media. You’re establishing relationships with different people with different skill sets so you can get the fans in the seats and get the players into the World Series.

The same goes for completing a real estate deal. Get to know a good real estate attorney to help with the contracts and legal problems. Choose an accountant with experience in real estate so you can have someone to go to with financial issues. Start networking with lending professionals so you can find seed money more quickly. Now, who else should you have on your team?

First, you need a question-and-answer person. That’s the one you talk to when you’re about to hit a roadblock and need to know how to avoid crashing the deal. Partner with a good real estate coach, and see how much easier your deals go. Okay, as a real estate coach, I can be a little prejudiced about that, but having an experienced professional on your side makes a huge difference in your income potential! Check out my website, if you haven’t already done so, and jump-start your own continuing education program.

Your in-house team is your next big partnership. Get advice from your guru on what skill sets to look for and how to structure the office duties. Then train your new people extremely well. The more they know about what you’re doing and why, the better partners they can become - just in case you need a pinch-hitter someday.

You’ll also need to build a relationship with someone who knows how to solve title problems. You never know when you’ll run into an issue with one of your properties, and you’ll need to be able to untwist those situations before the deal closes. Get to know an attorney or a title expert who knows the system, and save yourself a lot of grief down the road.

Partner with people who give you referrals and keep in touch with them to make sure your leads keep coming in. Give them incentives in the form of referral fees or commissions, encouraging them to tell you when they find someone who might need your help. If you’re a coach, these are your talent scouts. If you don’t have the big deals, you can’t make the big money.

You may find that real estate agents make the best referral sources. They are the first contact for most homeowners who need to sell, and there are limits to how many of those homeowners they are able to help. Maybe they’re just looking for someone to take over dealing with all the problem properties they find. Maybe they know enough people that they hear things others don’t. Get to know a few of the busiest Realtors and make sure they remember what you can do to help.

When you’re building partnerships in your local market, never forget that the benefits of knowing these people are mutual. The real estate market is rough all over, and there may be a time when they’ll need a short sale expert on their speed dial as well. Once you’re able to establish yourself as the go-to person for problem properties, their trust in you will increase to the point where they introduce you to other people you may never have met without them.

When you partner with other people in your community, you’re doing more than just furthering your own business interests. You are becoming a part of that community. You become someone that other people want to partner with. You are perpetuating the idea that it really does take a group effort to accomplish something important - in this case, helping homeowners avoid foreclosure.

If you need to learn more about developing real estate partnerships, check our our blog post about building your real estate business on our Strategic Real Estate Coach website!

A deficiency judgment is something that looms over the head of everyone who has to take a loss on their house, whether by foreclosure or by short sale. This isn’t the law in every state, but in many areas the mortgage lender is allowed to sue for the unpaid debt after the sale of the home - and when they can, they usually will.

You also probably know that a deficiency judgment is something that we all want to avoid, but why? What happens after the judge lays down the gavel?

Most of the time, the only way you can avoid a deficiency judgment is by negotiating with the lender during the pre-foreclosure process. They know how expensive it is to maintain their REO properties. The lender may consent to waive their right to collect the rest of the debt if they see that it will cost them less money in the long run to allow a short sale and simply let the debt go.

If negotiations fail with the bank about the status of the unpaid debt, the homeowner will be ordered by the court to pay it back. Only bankruptcy or paying it off will cancel the debt at that point.

How is a deficiency judgment figured? First, the judge will look at the proceeds from the sale of the home. If there was a short sale, the amount of the deficiency judgment is the mortgage debt less the sale proceeds. If the home went to auction, in most states, the judge will take the greater of the appraised value of that home or the highest bid from the auction and subtract that amount from the mortgage debt.

In either case, the homeowner is ordered by the court to pay back the leftover debt. It is entirely possible to have more than one deficiency judgment if there was more than one mortgage on that home.

Immediately after the judge signs the order, the deficiency judgment begins earning interest. If the lender adds its REO expenses to the balance, the interest just keeps climbing higher. There is an interest rate of 11 percent per year on deficiency judgments in Florida. What’s the rate in your state?

After establishing the new debt from the deficiency judgment, a bank typically turns around and sells the debt for pennies on the dollar. Banks know that collecting money from someone who couldn’t pay their mortgage is not worth their time and expense. They prefer to cut their losses and unload the debt on someone else.

And, in addition to that deficiency judgment, you will also take a hit on your credit report and, by extension, your FICO score. A deficiency judgment after a foreclosure stays on your credit report for seven to ten years. Future lenders, employers, or landlords may take one look at that and have second thoughts about working with you.

With the number of foreclosures increasing faster than ever, the number of deficiency judgments are increasing right along with them. As the government re-evaluates how foreclosures are done in various scenarios, they may also reconsider how deficiency judgments are handled as well. On the other hand, they may not.

Meanwhile, your job is to talk with the lender and see what it would take for them to agree to report your debt as “paid in full as agreed” to the credit reporting agencies. When you can negotiate that deficiency judgment away, you can save yourself years of financial headaches.

Need to learn more about how a foreclosure can affect people? Visit the Strategic Real Estate Coach website. You’ll be able to register for weekly updates on the latest developments in the mortgage industry and more!

I don’t have to tell most of you that title companies are nervous about closing two transactions involving the same property on the same day. Real estate investors can have a real juggling act on their hands when they’re trying to quick-turn a short sale, except it’s the title company who has to keep all the balls from hitting the ground.

The truth is that investors can open themselves up for all kinds of trouble if they don’t know what they’re doing. Those closings may look like some huge shell game to people, especially those whose job it is to uncover fraud in the real estate business. Nobody wants to be accused of being a scam artist, much less suffer the legal consequences.

If you’re closing a quick-flip on a short sale, you can avoid even the appearance of fraud by carefully setting up each separate transaction with the title company ahead of time. The key is to be completely transparent. In each of the two transactions, everyone needs to know what everyone else is doing, and the title company just needs to follow certain protocols to keep everyone honest.

1. Make it clear that the homeowner has no equity or negative equity in the property. Be ready with documentation like written gross payoff letters, which prove how much is owed on the property, and net payoff letters, which show the payoff after discounting the mortgage. The sales price minus the amount owed needs to be zero or less.

2. The original homeowner is allowed no cash back from the sale whatsoever. All of the investor’s money given to purchase the property must go either to pay off the debts or to pay the closing costs. If there is no equity, there is no gain to the seller.

3. The second sale, or the B to C transaction, must be a completely separate transaction in that the C buyer must be an independent third party who is unrelated to the prior property owner.

4. The original seller (the vested property owner) must sign the HUD-1 in person at the first closing, verifying that the terms of the sale have been fully disclosed. Both the seller and the investor must also agree that, if the end buyer’s lender needs the amount of the lien payoffs in writing, the HUD-1 may be released to that lender.

5. There must be written evidence that the investor/buyer’s funding lender on the purchase has full notice of the “double transfer” (property owner to investor, then investor to purchaser) involved in the overall sales transaction(s). This isn’t necessarily true of the foreclosing lender on the property. To the best of my knowledge, that lender has no right to obtain information on what happens to the property or the parties to the first transaction after the short sale of that property is closed.

If you have those five points covered, that juggling act can turn into a perfectly-timed relay race. This is one reason why I love being a real estate coach. I can talk about what I have learned over the years so you can know what you’re doing before you get into this stuff. If you’d like to avoid fraud in your investing business, take the time to learn from someone who has been there and lived to tell about it.

If you want to know more about avoiding real estate fraud, visit the Strategic Real Estate Coach website and check out our latest blog post about legal issues in real estate!

Cementing a sale has to begin with your first conversation with a client. There’s a method to our madness in the short sale business, and this conversation is right at the core.

If you’re going to be in sales, the first rule is to find out specifically what their issues and concerns really are before you try to sell them anything. When you understand their situation, you’re in a better position to help everyone get what they want. Every experienced salesperson does that.

A short sale investor’s clients are people in financial trouble who need to sell their houses. Their issue is pretty simple, right? They are behind on their mortgage payments, and the lender wants either the home or the money. When you look a little deeper, that doesn’t really tell you what their needs are. Different people are worried about different aspects of losing their home. Facts are important, but a short sale investor who wants their trust and their business will find out what they’re really worried about before moving on with the conversation.

Once you get to the emotional root of the problem, you can focus on creating the solution that will help them the most. As you’re listening to them talk about their problem, you need to be looking for that win-win somewhere in that awful situation. There is usually a win-win there for both you and the homeowner. Your job is to find it, and then help them see it.

So you let them talk first. Let them tell you their story, and don’t rush them. (You’ll be better off if you don’t interrupt, either.) After they finish speaking - and only after they finish speaking - your next move is to take those specific concerns, point by point, and tell them why your business has the solution to each problem. It’s time to have the Positive Results Conversation.

The Positive Results Conversation opens the door for you to introduce yourself and your services. In this conversation, you can use what you learned from listening to them and explain how you can meet each one of their needs. As a short sale investor, you should focus on helping the homeowner understand the different foreclosure options and how each one might affect this specific situation.

After you explain foreclosure options and alternatives, you will want to help the homeowner understand how short sales work. Short sale professionals already know that they have the best chance of minimizing the negative effects of the lender’s actions, but the average homeowner doesn’t. You also need to help them set realistic expectations of what the whole process will and won’t do for them.

There is no substitute for realistic expectations when it comes to getting involved in someone else’s financial business. An informed client who makes informed decisions is so much more likely to be a satisfied client. When you manage their expectations, you increase your chances of seeing the Positive Results Conversation work. When you don’t talk about what can and can’t happen, you risk putting yourself in the position of having to explain some unfortunate events later.

Finally, don’t try to wrap up the conversation before they hear everything, even if the seller asks you to. There is a reason that each one of your talking points is in your presentation, and you will do the homeowner a great disservice by leaving out part of it. You need to make the entire presentation for them to give your offer and your solution the full value it deserves. Without that, it will be much easier for the homeowner to cancel the deal for minor reasons or a slightly better offer coming along from the bank or one of your competitors.

The entire conversation can be completed in under 90 minutes without interruptions. Your own speaking style might vary this time somewhat, but sticking to the script will help keep that under control. By the time you’re done, you should have some positive results on the table already. The homeowners should see that there is a clear, legal solution to avoiding foreclosure, there is a professional negotiator on their side, and they can move on with their lives after the deal is done.

If you want to learn more, you can read about the whole Positive Results Conversation in the Short Sale Manifesto, which is a special report that can be found on our website (see the link below). There are a lot of talking points, but go over each one with the homeowner. We have done this for years, with positive results for homeowners and for us. Before you know it, you’ll be collecting all the documentation for the short sale package and moving forward.

Remember that this is a presentation we put together from experience. Everything in our Positive Results Conversation is specifically geared toward short sale success, and it has been proven to work over and over again. How will you really know when you get positive results? In your local market, you will become the one that people think of when they need someone who can solve tricky situations with problem properties. Your neighbors will know you as “the short sale expert”!

Want to learn more about helping homeowners in pre-foreclosure? Check out the Strategic Real Estate Coach resource page and learn our best short sale success strategies!

As a Realtor, how do you help sellers who are over-leveraged on their mortgage? Do you refer them to someone else - anyone else - or try to find a buyer before the sheriff’s sale? Did you ever help anyone work with their lender instead? It’s not the easiest transaction you’ll ever deal with, is it?

A short sale is often the best way for a homeowner to avoid foreclosure, and the best way for a real estate agent to handle a short sale is to outsource the negotiations to an expert short sale negotiator. But why?

I hear a lot of objections when I talk to real estate agents about helping them with their problem properties. I’ll list seven of their most common objections, and then I’ll give you another way to think about each of them.

“I don’t have time to keep track of the paperwork.” It’s true - negotiating a short sale requires timely information as to the status of the transaction. That’s okay. Your local short sale expert has access to special software programs that manage status updates. Go to www.realeflow.com and check it out. All you have to do is check the status, update the sellers, and remind them that there will be periods of time where it looks like nothing is happening, but where the file is actually moving closer and closer to a resolution on the loss mitigator’s desk.

“My short sale packages don’t seem to be at the top of anyone’s priority list.” With all the files being submitted to the loss mitigation departments, lenders are buried in paperwork. They won’t necessarily assign priority by when your packages are submitted. Loss mitigators would much rather work on short sale packages that are complete, organized, and submitted properly. The rest find their way to the bottom of the pile. Make sure that doesn’t happen to you by working with a competent investor or short sale negotiation company.

“It is a breach of fiduciary duty to the seller when I allow a third party to try to profit from this transaction.” The main idea is not to harm the seller. If the resale price is less than the seller owes on the mortgage - and fair market value will guarantee that - the seller won’t be giving up any profit. The third party investor is only being paid for their expertise in convincing the lender to discount the mortgage balance and approve the short sale.

“The seller thinks he can get a better price for the property if I don’t bring in a third party.” This is one misconception which is easy to clear up. First, a buyer will not pay more than fair market value for the property, and second, a seller in default will not see any money from the sale of the property anyway. If the seller is in default on their mortgage, and their only options are to either go through foreclosure or sell the house in a short sale, the lender will apply the proceeds from either sale to the seller’s mortgage debt.

“Involving a third-party investor means that the seller will be hit with a larger deficiency judgment later.” At first glance, this makes sense, but there are many factors that go into the amount of a deficiency judgment in this case. The third-party investor is actually there to counteract the lender’s intentions and mitigate the loss for the seller, which results in decreasing the final amount of a deficiency. Furthermore, by filing a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the seller can eliminate a deficiency judgment altogether.

“Buyers won’t wait for the short sale approval before closing.” It’s true - most buyers want to move in right away. You won’t find many buyers who will make a good offer and then be patient for several months while the sellers work out their issues. However, the investor may already know someone who wants to buy the property and is willing to wait, in which case you won’t have to find the buyer at all. If you do find a buyer and explain the situation, that buyer may actually consider the professional short sale negotiator as a positive factor in the sale. They will know that the sale is more likely to be approved, so the wait might be worth it.

“If the short sale isn’t approved, the investor still makes money from the seller’s misfortune.” If you work with an ethical investor, this isn’t true at all. At the end of the short sale negotiation process, the lender may still completely refuse to work with the seller on the deficiency. In these rare cases, the investor will avoid hurting the seller and back out of the transaction and let the house sell directly to your end buyer. You can discuss this with the investor before working with him or her.

Specialized training is important in real estate. Not every agent is familiar with commercial or new construction issues, for instance. This also applies to working with properties in pre-foreclosure. You will help those sellers more by working with someone who specializes in working with homeowners in distress.

If you need to find a better way to help homeowners in foreclosure, check out our free report about becoming a Real Estate Rebel. Challenge yourself to follow our ethical, proven strategies for building your real estate business beyond your wildest dreams!

If you’re going to do short sales, you’ll need to know a little about bankruptcy - or at least about how it relates to foreclosures. Chances are, you’re going to run into a homeowner who has heard a thing or two and wants to talk about it.

Keep in mind that you’re not there to advise them on whether or not they should do it. Stick to talking about the facts related to how bankruptcy affects homeowners in foreclosure, and advise them to take that information to a bankruptcy attorney. You don’t want to let them think you can help them file, or be accused of practicing law without a license.

This is about knowing how to hold an intelligent conversation about what bankruptcy can and cannot do for a homeowner in default. I’m going to start with a vocabulary lesson. Just by learning a few key terms, you can learn the basics and perhaps help the homeowner learn the right questions to ask their attorney.

Stay: In court, an order to stay something means to hold off on pursuing it until certain terms are met. In bankruptcy court, the lender is ordered to hold off collecting money or assets from the borrower until the court decides what to do about the house. A stay will buy the homeowner some time to find a buyer, find the money to bring the mortgage current, or find another place to live.

Motion for Relief of Stay: This is the lender’s response to a bankruptcy stay. Mortgage lenders will often file a Motion for Relief of Stay with the bankruptcy court, which may or may not allow that lender to continue or restart the foreclosure process.

A lender may ask the court to allow the foreclosure to proceed for one of two reasons. One is a lack of equity. If the homeowner owes more than the house is worth, there is no way the bankruptcy court will be interested in what happens to the house. The homeowner won’t gain anything from the sale to give to other creditors. The second reason has to do with the homeowner’s compliance with the court. If the person has been ordered to begin making payments and hasn’t kept up with the program, the judge may not feel like they deserve to keep the house.

Abandonment of Assets: An abandoned asset is one with such little value (such as a house with negative equity) that no creditor, besides the secured lienholder, could possibly be interested in including it in the bankruptcy proceedings. As far as the bankruptcy court is concerned, the asset (the house) is said to be abandoned.

Bankruptcy Discharge: At the end of the Chapter 7 or a Chapter 13 bankruptcy process, the court will declare and record that all of the individual’s debts included in the bankruptcy have been discharged, which simply means that the individual is no longer responsible for them.

Bankruptcy Dismissal: Most frequently used in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, the term “dismissal” means that the individual has lost the ability to file bankruptcy papers and have his debts discharged. The court dismisses a bankruptcy when the individual fails to comply with either the court’s request for paperwork or the trustee’s payment plan. The legislative reforms that became effective in October 2005 limited an individual’s ability to refile bankruptcy in the event of a dismissal.

Bankruptcy is a common topic among people who are in financial trouble, especially when it involves a mortgage. If you would like to continue this conversation, don’t forget that you can always find a colleague at Strategic Real Estate Coach. You may never become a bankruptcy expert, but as a real estate professional, you can at least know what everyone else is talking about.

You may want to speak with a bankruptcy attorney yourself to get the details about how this works in your state. In the meantime, just remember this: When a homeowner files bankruptcy, the court won’t stop the foreclosure permanently, but it could delay the auction temporarily and buy the homeowner some time to work things out another way.

Need more information about helping homeowners in default on their mortgage? Visit the Strategic Real Estate Coach website, and check out our free report about becoming a Real Estate Rebel!

There are few things more stressful than finding out that you’re about to lose your house. Cash flow is tight, bill collectors are blowing up your phone, unhappy family members might be pointing fingers, and you’re in enough hot water without having to find a new place to live, too. All you can think about is making the problem go away.

You might know someone who has been through that already, so maybe you have an idea of what can happen. You might not even realize you have more than one or two options. Walking away from the house is tempting, but your real options have to include your end game. What do you want your debt and your credit to look like after the house goes away?

Everyone involved in the foreclosure process, especially homeowners and the real estate professionals they hire, needs to be fully informed on the ramifications of each individual situation. Homeowners need to take the initiative to educate themselves so they can make informed decisions every step of the way. Real estate professionals need to take the lead in helping homeowners understand which decisions need to be made and when. Understanding how the foreclosure process works is the key to surviving the loss of a home.

Two of the options have been covered frequently in the media lately: deed-in-lieu and loan modifications.

A deed-in-lieu means that the homeowner agrees to simply hand over the property to the bank. It helps the bank make the repossession easier, but it still hurts the homeowner’s credit as if the foreclosure had actually taken place.

What about loan modifications? The government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) promotes mortgage loan modifications as being a viable way to deal with the foreclosure crisis. Yet the current rate of success for those loans to go from trial to permanent modification is 4 percent. Using California as an example, roughly 140,000 trial loans have entered into the modification process; however, only 5,600 loans will be modified based on their current success rate (4 percent). California filed over 450,000 notices of default for 2009. Those being helped are few and far between given the current numbers.

Here are some more likely options.

1) Live in the house until eviction, and let the bankruptcy system hold off the foreclosure until the auction date. It won’t make the foreclosure go away, but it will help the homeowner save money temporarily.

2) Try to sell the house for the amount owed on the mortgage, hoping that a buyer will pay the asking price before the auction date. Obviously, it isn’t likely that someone will pay more than the home’s fair market value, so this strategy often fails.

3) The real estate agent could list the house as a short sale and convince the buyer to wait until the bank approves the short sale so they can get a great deal on the house. This option might save the realtor’s commission, but many buyers won’t - or can’t - wait.

One complication arises when the agent has to convince the buyer to not only sign the purchase agreement, but to wait at least 60 to 90 days to take possession. The typical buyer needs something that is already available.

Several roadblocks can come up during the process of negotiating a short sale if the seller and/or his agent don’t completely understand how to manage those negotiations. Lenders are very careful to train their loss mitigation department in debt collection, so sellers and agents who aren’t as well-trained in short sale negotiation skills can be easily sidelined.

For instance, sometimes promissory notes and deficiency judgments can be avoided after a short sale. Did you know that? It can be worth a great deal to a homeowner when you not only learn how the system works, but also how to work the system.

4) The real estate agent could list the house as a short sale, while arranging the purchase by a short sale investor who doesn’t mind handling the paperwork, negotiating a successful short sale on the seller’s behalf, and waiting for the lender’s approval before closing on the house. The homeowner would avoid a foreclosure, the agent would still get the commission, and the buyer would get the home as an investment property to sell or rent.

There are many reasons why a homeowner in default would be better off letting an experienced short sale investor handle their negotiations. One reason has to do with the broker price opinion, or BPO. A professional short sale negotiator will know how to use the BPO to the homeowner’s advantage.

The four main options for homeowners in default should be made evident to everyone involved. They can stay in the home and use the bankruptcy process, they can sell the home for what they owe the bank, they can ask a potential buyer to wait out the short sale negotiation process, or they can outsource the negotiations to a short sale investor who will buy the house from them.

My partners at Strategic Real Estate Coach specialize in educating people about short sale solutions for homeowners in trouble. We offer a free Silver Membership in the coaching program, and the benefits include several reports to help you learn everything you need to succeed!

Attorney Jeff Watson has some great commentary on the legal side of real estate investing. You can find that and more on his blog. Just visit topshortsalelawyer.com.

Use the most current information about foreclosure options to inform yourself and the homeowners you work with. Educated homeowners are better able to decide what is best for their financial situation and make it possible to avoid foreclosure and go on with their lives.

Need to know more about foreclosure options? Get all the information you need from Strategic Real Estate Coach!

Every day, it seems, I talk to a real estate investor who is having trouble with marketing, only they don’t put it like that. They all want to know where to find the good deals. Sound familiar? They want to know what they should be doing differently, because what they’re doing isn’t working. Their cash flow is way too inconsistent, and they’re all wondering if there could be a better way to get leads.

That’s a great question, and I can answer it in a single word: referrals.

I have coaching students all across the United States who have a jam-packed pipeline of pre-foreclosure and short sale leads, and they spend absolutely no money on marketing. How? They have solid sources in their local markets who feed them free leads to these properties on a regular basis.

Before you go referral-hunting, you need to initiate a couple of referral-friendly programs in your business. The first task is to set up a referral fee structure for professionals who are willing to send you leads. Fees can range from $200 to $2,000, and this extra incentive from a done deal is a very motivating and very simple policy for you to begin. The second task is to develop a Gift Referral Incentive Program (GRIP) for private individuals who take the time to talk to a homeowner in trouble about working with you.

Think of the referral programs as the carrot. Now, let’s think about who might be on the other end of the stick. Remember, there is no cost to simply getting to know people and giving your elevator speech.

Lawyers: Find attorneys who regularly deal with people in financial trouble. Think in terms of bankruptcy and divorce for a minute. Divorcing couples who own homes often argue about who is going pay the mortgage during the divorce proceedings, and usually end up selling it when the arguing results in missed payments. Bankruptcy attorneys by definition know homeowners who need to get out of financial trouble and avoid foreclosure. Other attorneys may be good sources as well. Do a little networking and ask them to introduce you to the right people.

Mortgage Brokers: This may surprise you, but many mortgage brokers feel terrible about giving mortgage loans to people who couldn’t afford them. When they find an opportunity to help people get out from under a bad loan, they tend to grab it. Meanwhile, they are processing a lot of refinancing requests and having to turn people down because the homeowners owe more than the house is worth. Take advantage of this by asking them to refer you to those people. A carefully written direct mail campaign, paid for by the broker, may also bring in refinancing leads. Those letters could ask the homeowner to call you if and when refinancing fails. When these short sale leads result in a closed deal, the broker gets a referral fee.

Title Companies: Sometimes title agents run into homeowners who are facing foreclosure. Tell them what you do, and make a deal with them. When they work with a mortgage broker who can’t help a homeowner refinance their mortgage, they can be the ones who refer those people to you. Title company employees know a lot about who is doing what in the local real estate market. If they know they can earn a referral fee from telling you what they know, they will do that.

Construction Companies: Building contractors and rehabbers go through the same cash flow ups and downs that you do. Get to know the lead guys and ask them to pass on information they happen to hear about homeowners who need to sell their house. These people work with real estate professionals all the time, so there’s a good chance they’ll run into someone who would be a great candidate for a short sale. Remember to emphasize their chance to earn a referral fee of up to $2,000 and encourage them to keep their ears open for those leads.

Other Investors: When most of the real estate investing community was into rehab, we were focusing on short sales. We quickly realized that many rehabbing investors didn’t know what to do with properties that were over-leveraged and heading to foreclosure. We told these investors that we wanted those deals and would pay them a fee if it closed, usually $1,000 to $2,000. This turned out to be a great way for us to meet other investors, learn about their business, and pick up several additional leads each month.

Sellers, Friends, and Family: The homeowner will be feeling pretty good about how you helped them when the sale of their home closes. While you can, take that opportunity to talk to them about who else they might know in their situation. Emphasize the benefits of referring their friends to you with your GRIP flyer, and leave them with a business card or two to pass along just in case they think of anyone later who might need your help. Hand those out to your family and friends too. They’ll be more likely to remember you when they talk to a homeowner in financial trouble.

Great conversations with the right people can lead to great short sale leads. You can have fun, save money, and build your business all at the same time!

If you are looking for the best short sale information, then go to Strategic Real Estate Coach to sign up for a free membership!

The boom of the internet has enabled successful real estate social marketing for real estate professionals who want to utilize the web for marketing their property listings and business. Being basically a visual medium, real estate marketing has become more popular with video marketing. You can showcase your property listings in the form of virtual tours online in the form of video content that can attract potential real estate consumers. However, it is also important to consider the aspect of video editing for effective video marketing. Some good quality video editing resources are Camtasia and Sony Vegas.

Camtasia is a very popular video editing resource. It is capable of producing HD-quality video content for the internet and also for mobile devices. It is completely jerk free and non interruptible and generate absolutely clear videos. The file sizes are also compact thus take up less disk space. Camtasia has the ability to record all the activities on your desktop with just one click and makes compilations easy and simple.

This resource is also an important video editing tool. Camtasia enables real estate professionals to convert their real estate videos into pages on the internet. This method is helpful since the traffic can be directly shifted there. As web surfers usually respond better to videos rates of such conversion is seen as usually high. This is really helpful because the surfers can find a strong connection and are interested too since they can see as well as hear all that you have to say and show to them.

With Camtasia for video editing, you can also produce multi media presentations that incorporate all senses since using all senses leads top an increase in sales. Many skeptical customers can also be easily impressed with this method. Your main aim should be to create a video that clearly demonstrates the utility of your product.

Sony Vegas is popular and effective software of video editing. It has the reputation of being a high-quality program. It has more influence and prospects than other freebies. With updated characteristics and advantages, many realtors have used this software to generate their best videos.

The latest collection of Sony Vegas known as the collection of Vegas Pro 9 incorporates two potential applications that function effortlessly together for providing an intuitive and efficient environment for broadcast and video professionals of various streams and fields. This technique of video editing is rapidly gaining precedence over many others available in the market.

Sony Vegas as a comprehensive suite provides the most progressive and robust platform that is available for content formation and production. With superior effects processing, complementary editorial tools, wide format support, incomparable audio support, the Pro collection of Vegas improves and augments your work flow. From acquisition to the delivery, from the basic camera to the Blu-ray Disc?, this collection provides all that you require from a good video editing software.

Therefore, with the fantastic Vegas Pro 9 software for video editing, a real estate professional can achieve fabulous results for online real estate social marketing. With this kind of software you can make your video marketing a huge success among people and gain a lot of popularity. Thus to conclude we can say, Video editing is a very important requirement for good promotion of real estate listings.

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