Do You Play the Game of Survivor with Your Sellers?
I have…and I didn’t like it too much.
courses I have read would have you believe your primary job is to outsmart these sellers and make deals in some sort of an adversarial relationship where the seller winds up taking a bath. Your negotiating skills must be constantly sharpened and honed in order to get already beaten down sellers to do things that they really have no desire to do all purely in the interest of saving their credit or avoiding foreclosure.
It probably isn’t your fault…I certainly don’t think it was mine. My nature is not to be heartless and cutthroat. It is most likely just the way we’re taught to “be” in the investing game.
I am here to tell you that your job in all of this will be much easier, you will be much happier and you will last a lot longer in this business if it’s not like that. And it really doesn’t have to be.
After all, as an investor, our job is to get the best deal possible and I find that with most investors I meet, there is usually not a lot of regard for the situation the seller is left in.
But wait... we have new investors who are taught what I call the “win/ win” myth and they base their approach with sellers on the ridiculous notion that even though it’s investor vs. seller, dog eat dog out there, they have to box it up, paint it up or wrap it up and present it so that no one will ever notice or suspect they are the ones walking out the door with all the marbles in their pockets. I am telling you to forget all of that.
Do you feel like your job as an investor is to outwit, outlast and outplay your real estate sellers? Ever felt like a “predator” as a real estate investor? Especially when dealing with distressed sellers. Ever been called one?
Most new investors assume, as they are usually taught, that they will have to virtually come out swinging, practically doing battle with the real estate sellers they make contact with who are in trouble and that they will have to beat them down in order to put deals together. A lot of real estate investing MAREI.org
What I want to share with you today is that your job in all of this is NOT
to be suiting up for war with desperate, down on their luck, no place else to go sellers, because this is a war that’s best fought with those same sellers completely on our side. How many more deals can you do if the seller is your partner in this? Now I am not talking about an actual business partner but someone working with you, wanting you to be successful, too. A partner in the sense of helping you to get things done. Someone actually wanting you to succeed. Once I learned this approach and changed my way of thinking, my ability to get deals that otherwise wouldn’t have been “gettable” skyrocketed. What is the approach? It is actually pretty simple. It is all in the presentation. When I lived stateside, I was a doorknocker. I loved to take that Saturday and head out to those properties that had older loans on them and knock on the doors getting to the sellers days before the “scared guys” cards or letters showed up. Door knocking let me put together deals I could have never gotten had a just mailed out and since these
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