Are you negotiations with sellers like a battle of survivor

Do You Play the Game of Survivor with Your Sellers?

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?

I have…and I didn’t like it too much.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 deals were the ones with old loans, the profits were the most handsome, too.

How you present at the door makes all the difference in being perceived as a predator or a knight in shining armor to these people. And it isn’t just a matter of saying the words… you have to mean it.

When they opened the door, I said, “Hi, Mr. Smith?” If he confirmed he was, indeed, Mr. Smith…”My name is William Tingle. I am here because I understand your bank is trying to take this house away from you and I would like to see if I can help you stop that from happening.”

I didn’t say anything about buying the house. I didn’t mention foreclosure, divorce, tax liens or any of that. I said I was there to see if I could help.

Now, will all sellers be savable? No, they won’t. You and the seller will come to that understanding while you are sorting everything out. But some will and for those people you WILL be a hero. To others that you can help by buying their house, you are still a hero for trying.

You offer yourself as the seller’s “knight in shining armor,” and the only fighting or negotiating you want to do is with anyone and everyone who is out to get that seller. As a potential hero, he will be your partner in all this and it will be your job as resident knight in shining armor to protect him and get him to wherever it is he’s hoping to go after all the dust settles.

He is in a crisis situation with his financial wellbeing under attack, the dragons and black knights are surrounding him and it is your job to assist him in defense of his real estate assets and minimize the damage from the attackers at all costs.

Do we fight? You better believe we do!

Do we fight real estate sellers? You better believe we don’t!

Our job? “Knight in shining armor.”

Our role? Defender of sellers’ financial wellbeing.

Our fight? Stopping cold anyone and everyone attacking our seller.

Understand this. You can get unbelievably wealthy as a real estate investor and you don’t have to outwit, outlast & outplay sellers while you make off with their last dime of equity to do it. That’s a terrible way to do business and not a profession I would want to claim. Instead, refuse to take on any role other than the hero. It is your job to save the day by using your skills, resources, and know-how to effectively protect the seller from anyone or anything that has him in peril.

Yes, we do battle, but we do so strictly as knights in shining armor on behalf of distressed sellers who are facing financial destruction. And when it’s our turn to act, we step up with colors flying and save the day . . . just like any hero should.

Forget any ideas of negotiating adversarial relationships. Forget trying to outwit, outlast and outplay sellers who are so distracted by their situation and wouldn’t know enough about real estate investing anyway for it to be considered anything near a fair fight. I spent years being taught that being a successful real estate investor meant being able to trick people into giving me great deals to the point of feeling a bit like a con man whose job it was to pull the wool over their eyes to make it happen.

Trust me, doing business that way is no fun at all. These days, I take pride in my job as a “knight in shining armor”.

There is not much that feels better than showing up at just the right time, saving the day and having my seller walk away with his dignity and sometimes a nice chunk of cash that would have otherwise been lost to those nasty dragons and black knights.

There is nothing like having a distressed seller, someone who has been beaten black and blue not only by the banks, lenders or other enemies but by a few of the “predator investors” tell me, “Thank you! I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t called! You saved the day!”

Awe shucks…just doing my job.

Where else can you make an obscene profit AND be thought of as a hero by the person paying you?

Working with sellers in trouble is much easier than trying to make something happen that does nothing to further that guy’s situation or put him in a better place than if he would have let the house go. If he believes we’re just another enemy there to steal his house, it’s going to be tough to get him onboard. However, when he understands our job is to take this losing situation and turn it into something that we can both profit from, then all of a sudden we’re on the same team with each of us focused on one common goal . . . making the bad guys go away.

And when that happens, the potential for profit increases greatly!

Battles are fought and won . . . but we never fight them against real estate sellers in trouble. You want these people to think of themselves as your partners in this battle and when we arrive on the scene with swords drawn and colors flying, they are the very people who want nothing more than to see us make their troubles go away . . . and if you know how to get things done, they will pay you handsomely for doing so.

Remember, you’re their knight in shining armor, riding alongside them and defending them even when under attack from all directions . . . and that’s what this type of investing with distressed owners is all about.

The focus of this article today was YOU, your role and the fights you should be facing as a real estate investor dealing with distressed owners going forward. I suspect this is a new and different approach than you have probably ever heard of before. One to which you’ve likely never been exposed but one you must understand thoroughly before meeting with your next distressed seller.

Starting today, I want you to think of yourself as a knight in shining armor, not a predator real estate investor.

Would you like to learn how to buy houses subject to and save the day for your seller at the same time? Join me in November at MAREI.

William Tingle www.Sub2Deals.com