I remember many years ago when I spent hours of time trying to figure out how to generate my own “Yellow Letter.” I was sending direct mail to a pre-foreclosure list trying to generate leads for short sales, and I heard that this particular “Yellow letter” works well. It was frustrating trying to figure it out on my own. Do I hand write each of these letters one at a time? What, are you kidding? That’s crazy! Do I go find a yellow tablet and somehow tear out all the pages and run it through the copier one at a time? Again, sounds a little crazy. The “Yellow Letter” is not necessarily yellow. Sure, it can be, and maybe it’s a good idea in your area. Mine isn’t yellow (it’s white) and it generates me a load of leads. Check out the 6 minute video, and I’ll show you how I do my “Yellow Letter.”

By the way, I’ve used this letter for both loan mods and short sales. It works well for both in my area. Give it a try in yours and see what you think.

To your success!

Marty Schulting
Top Foreclosure Training
Accelerated Loan Mods
Co-Founder and Coach

In this business, you’re going to win some and you’re going to lose some. Very few people can walk into this business and be an immediate success without some quality coaching and a solid support network. When I started this business, I was a member of a coaching program and a mentoring group. The group was critical to my success, and we all became very close. It was this group that made my business a serious success. It was the people in this mentoring group that I called on when things were going well, and more importantly who I called on when things were NOT going well. When I was having a hard time with something, I simply called someone in my group, and one of them was able to help me through the situation. When I was down, somebody else in my group was up! This is what kept me going when I felt like quitting. Additionally, when I had a huge success, it was only people in this group that could really understand. This is why I became so close to my group, and a few specific members of my group. My mentoring group greatly accelerated my learning curve, and without them, I would not be nearly as big of a success in this business as I have become. This is no absolutely no way. Learning hard lessons and continuing to move forward is what will make you a huge success. Who you surround yourself with will determine your level of success in this business. It is those same people who will help you keep your head up when you’re feeling down.

Marty Schulting

Your ability to negotiate will determine your success or failure in this business. Remember, there are 4 different negotiations you need to successfully do before you can collect a paycheck, and the one we’re going to talk about here is with the bank (or the loss mitigator). The first thing you need to understand is that the banks train their loss mitigators. Banks train their loss mitigators on many different negotiating techniques (some of which include lying… yes, lying). So how are you to counter that? You’re just trying to get a successful short sale deal negotiated at a fair price that can make you some money and save the homeowner from foreclosure and a deficiency! So how can you counter this? Here is how you do it. First off, do not negotiate over the phone. Try to do all your negotiating via fax. Now that being said, the reality of it all is that the negotiator is probably going to call you. Ok, so how do you handle that? Well, you need to have to front yourself as the “negotiator” on the deal. Do not tell them you’re the buyer. If they try to corner you (which they will), just tell them that you need to talk with the buyer and see if they will agree to the banks terms. That will give you some time to “think” about what is happening and what you want to do. Here’s an example. You’ve offered the bank $155,496 for a property. They do the BPO and counter you (verbally) at $194,000. What do you do? Get all the loss mitigator’s contact information (if you don’t already have it) and tell them you’ll pass on the information and fax them the counter offer. DO NOT NEGOTIATE OVER THE PHONE!!! Tell them that you do not have authority to do so, and that you’ll get back to them. Simple enough. When you DO send your counter offer, just come up $1000 or so. After this, then bank may drop their price significantly, or they may hold firm at their $194,000 price. Realize that if you did the BPO correctly, and found out what the agent submitted it at, you’ll know where the loss mitigator is going with the price. For example, if the BPO came in at $160,000, then you know the loss mitigator will come down to that price and that they’re just trying to get you to come up. If, however, the BPO came in at $199,000, then you know the loss mitigator will hang closer to the $194,000 number. Make sense? Realize that most of the time when you’re doing a short sale on a pre foreclosure, the loss mitigator is going to lie about where the BPO came in at. It’s just what they do. That’s why you need to do your best to find out what number the agent submitted it at. With your own techniques to counter the loss mitigators, you will get more deals done, and greatly increase your profit on those deals. For example, as I developed better negotiating techniques, I saw an increase in profit (per deal) by $10,000 to $20,000… PER DEAL!

The technique of being the “negotiator” will put you on a more level playing field with the loss mitigator and most adversarial tendencies should be avoided with this one technique. Of course there are many techniques to use in your negotiating, more of which we’ll cover in more blog posts.

Now go get some deals!!!

Marty Schulting