There are many ways to acquire the list of people facing foreclosure, some of which you want to avoid. We recommend you do not buy the list from a nation wide service. Many of these services have information that is either outdated or inaccurate. Instead, look for a local service that can provide you with the list. Some are cheap and some are a little costly. For example, there’s a service in Kansas City, MO that charges about $35 per month. The same service in Raleigh, NC costs $140/month for two counties. Of course you could always go to the courthouse yourself and get the list yourself. When you’re new to the business and have little expendable cash, this might be a good idea. Later on, this will probably not be the best use of your time. Additionally, it’s preferable to have a service that can go to the courthouse every day for you, that way you’re certain that you’re marketing to the newest list of pre-foreclosures and maximizing the number of deals you have coming into your pipeline.

What I do in Raleigh, is I have a service that I pay for two of the counties I work. I have a person I know and trust who goes to a third county for me. He goes once or twice a week and simply records the newest Notice of Trustee Sales and e-mails them to me. I pay him a slight fee for his time and efforts. With what I have in place in Raleigh, I know I’ll have constant access to the lists that I can have my direct mail person download directly and use to generate the direct mail we send out to all homeowners.

If you decide to go to the courthouse yourself, you should look for the Special Proceedings section of the county courthouse. If you can’t find it, just ask someone where the new notice of trustee sales or the new notice of defaults are kept and where the public can access them. If you’re still having problems, just ask where the foreclosures are handled, that should get you in the right direction.

Realize that some courthouses will have a book out front with all the new properties (some organized, some not). Some courthouses will need you to request it, and some will only give you 5 or so at a time. However it works, treat the person behind the counter with the utmost respect. She can make your life easy or miserable. Ask questions, smile, be nice. Realize that she may know somebody who is coming to the courthouse on a daily basis. If she can put you into contact with that person, maybe he/she will also give you the list for a small fee. See where I’m going with this? I know a guy who took bagels every time for the first 3 or 4 times he went. They LOVED him! Just consider it.

This should not only give you an idea of how to get the list, but also how you can automate it in the future to free up your time for more important things, such as getting more deals, negotiating the ones that you have, and getting your properties sold.

Good luck!

Marty Schulting

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I know what you’re thinking. Come on Marty, are these late night infomercials for real? Can you really buy and sell houses with no money and no credit? I’m here to tell you that ABSOLUTELY you can! I do it month after month and deal after deal. My primary exit strategy on pre foreclosure short sales is to do a simultaneous closing, which allows me to do the closing with zero money and zero credit. It’s an absolutely outstanding way to close the deals and puts me at the least amount of risk.

Ok, here’s the readers digest version of why and how you can, and you are going to be amazed at how easy it is. All you do is acquire a property from a homeowner facing foreclosure that needs a short sale done on their property. You can either put the property into a Land Trust or your can put an Option on the property. Next, you negotiate the discount with the lender. In parallel, you market for and find your end buyer who wants to buy the property from you (and yes, you can find retail buyers using traditional financing, EVEN FHA BUYERS!!!). Get your approval letter from the bank on the accepted short sale price. Take that paperwork to your title company or attorney. Have your end buyer get their funding in place. On the day of closing, you simply buy the property from the homeowner and sell it to your end buyer the same day. Because you are selling it the same day (it’s called a “double closing” or “simultaneous closing”) your end buyer is funding the transaction. The difference between what you buy the property for from the homeowner and what you sell it for to your end buyer (minus closing costs) is what you get to keep. Your credit score is irrelevant and you don’t need to bring money to the table. And because you’re using a Land Trust or an Option, your end buyer can even use traditional financing because the property has already seasoned. See, I told you it was easy. After you do your first deal like this, you’ll be walking away from the title company with a check for $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 or more with a baffled look on your face because you just did what everybody told you was impossible. J

Marty Schulting

When you start the pre foreclosure business, you quickly realize that there is more work to do than one person can handle for too long without going crazy. Up front, it’s important to do all the work yourself, but very quickly, it’s important to start outsourcing the work piece by piece. One of the first pieces I outsourced was the direct mail. There are many ways to outsource direct mail, and I’ve tried them all. I’ve found the best way to do it is this. Find somebody who has extra time on their hands and who would love to make a little extra money. Ideally, this person has an internet connection. Go out and buy everything necessary to do the direct mail, including the envelopes, return address labels, stamps, letters… everything. Take that person all of these supplies. Show them how to stuff the envelopes, address the envelopes, etc… now let them go crazy with it. Simple enough? At first, I had the person complete the letters and I would pick them up to inspect them. After I’m comfortable that they’re being done correctly, then I allow the direct mail person to drop them in the mail box. Then the final step is to have them pull the list (my list is web based from a local company that goes to the courthouse every day). So what happens for me is this…. I do nothing and my list gets mailed for me. Every homeowner in my area gets 2 letters from me, and I don’t do a thing to get it done. It just happens and I write a check every 2 weeks. Well, I take that back, I do have to buy supplies for my direct mail person because she’s only 13 years old and doesn’t have her license. So once every couple months I go to the wholesale store and buy a couple months worth of supplies. It’s nice to know that the list is being mailed and I don’t have to worry about it. It frees my time up to talk to homeowners and get properties to short sale.

So what do I pay for this service? $.20 per letter. When you total everything from the letters, envelopes, stamps, etc, my direct mail campaign costs me about $.75 per lettter.

This is just one of many ways to automate your business. Every piece of this business can be automated, it takes a little time to get it all into place, but when it’s done, you’ll find yourself raking in paycheck after paycheck after paycheck, and you’ll realize that you hardly did any work to make that check happen… well, all your work was done when you built the business. When the work is done, it’s time to sit back and watch it all happen!

This is an awesome business!

Marty Schulting

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One of the marketing techniques that most people know about, but most refuse to do, is door knocking. It’s my personal favorite type of marketing because early on in my career, it helped my business “turn the corner” from a struggling business in it’s infancy to a highly successful foreclosure short sale business! When done correctly, this type of marketing will literally put as many deals as you want or need into your pipeline, which of course means as many paychecks as you want or need as well! Today, I combine door knocking with internet marketing (websites) and direct mail. Combining these three marketing techniques provides my pre foreclosure short sale business with more deals than I can handle. Early in your career, I recommend also including bandit signs, referral marketing, networking, craigs list, newspaper adds, and any and every other type of marketing you can get your hands on. Soon enough, you’ll figure out what works best in your area to keep your pipeline full, which will very quickly generate you more paychecks than you could ever dream of!

Good Luck!

Marty Schulting

When we think about marketing for a pre-foreclosure business, we need to think about it just like any other business.  If we were in a pizza business, a lawn care business or a spa business, we would most certainly be marketing our business as a true business.  Too many times I see people market their foreclosure business as a hobby, which causes leads to come in as if your business is a hobby. Marketing in this fashion hardly makes for a successful foreclosure business. When marketing for motivated foreclosure seller leads, we need to make sure that we use multiple types of marketing also called a multipronged approach.  If we simply send out letters to the notice of sale list just like everyone else is doing in our markets, our mail pieces will simply get mixed in with all of the other hundreds of mail pieces. I would highly suggest that until you get your pipeline full and maintain it at a level that your satisfied, you start out with no less than three different types of marketing, I would even suggest starting out with five. Examples would be a direct-mail campaign, newspaper ads, Craig’s list adds, referral marketing with real estate agents, referral marketing with bankruptcy attorneys, and you most certainly need a website for your business. I’ll be continually posting different marketing techniques on this blog, so make sure you check back often because some of the stuff is really under the radar of what most people know, and I’ll be sharing that with you.

Have a great day,

David Corbaley