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So you need to sell your home?
This article will help you to sell your home and create a bunch of leads who are HOT prospects to buy your home.
Before, we share 3 unique ideas on selling your homes, you need to take a few simple steps…
1. PREPARATION
Find a Good Mortgage Broker
You need to locate and interview an aggressive Mortgage Broker, very knowledgeable, with a GREAT TRACK RECORD of closing deals, especially difficult ones.
I cannot stress enough the importance, of having a great broker on your power team. Sometimes you can find a good broker through a local R.E.I.A. (real estate investor club) in your area. Whenever you hear a member say they successfully closed a deal, you should always make sure to inquire for an introduction to the broker who closed the deal.
Remember, you can sell a home ten times but if you can’t get the buyer funded by a mortgage company, who cares – you’re wasting your time.
Fix the House Up
You should make some effort in fixing the home up, even if it’s a hunker. You can still get the lawn cut and maybe throw a coat of paint on the property. You’d be amazed at the improvement to even an ugly property with a clean yard and a simple coat of paint.
Go Where the Buyers Are
Go to your local community financing office or local grant and home buyer bond office. For example, in South Florida and Palm Beach County, both counties run a FREE class for young buyers on becoming first time home buyers. When they take the class, they also get a voucher from the county, giving them $10,000.00 toward the purchase of their first home. The best part is sometimes the loans are even forgiven when certain criteria are met by the new homeowner.
2. DO SOME CREATIVE MARKETING
Let’s be frank, your going to have to be more aggressive, smarter and persistent than 99% of your competition.
There’s no magic pill, but this has worked for some.
Buyer First System
Basically you create your own buyers. The best example would be converting a lifetime renter into the “American Dream Homeowner.”
Very simply, create a flyer, postcard Facebook ad, and market to communities of people who would be a great prospect to buy your home.
Who doesn’t want to be a homeowner in America? Nobody — most people would rather be a homeowner than a renter
The real key here is that for individuals renting, most are under the impression they CAN’T get a mortgage. They might have tried in the past and we’re shutdown and embarrassed, only to believe they would live the rest of their lives as a RENTER.
These are the best leads you can focus on because it’s not a matter of IF they’ll buy your home, they will, the key is, can you get them funded or is it the house financially affordable.
This strategy will take some time and initiative because their is much hand-holding involved, mortgage brokers, and and others helping them get government assistance through First Time Homebuyer money.
Fish in some one else’s pond!
Go where the most prospects are for your home. I’ll give you some examples, you need to go where the most and the best prospects are to buy your home, assuming it’s a good deal (priced right) and that there’s still built-in equity for your buyer.
If you have any contacts or a friend of a friend, now is the time you can leverage connections to open doors for you to their sphere of influence.
For Example, a teacher had a cousin (she was a middle school teacher) and she introduced him into the schools where she worked. It just happened that the schools were in the same area that he was selling a great starter home.
He ended up selling the home he needed to sell and, once word spread of what he was able to do, the rest of the teachers came out of everywhere, wanting him to help them. He’s since helped the 1st teacher, sold another 5 homes to 5 different teachers and earned over $30,000.00 for this simple, leveraged relationship.
So what ponds can you fish in with your marketing? Think about whom you know (friends, family members and work associates)?
BEST PROSPECTS: Teachers, Cops, Firefighters, Government Employees, Bus Drivers, Department of Transportation. (These careers are loved by lenders, they mostly have good credit and their income is basically guaranteed and very stable.)
GOOD PROSPECTS: Large local employers: Supermarkets, Local telephone company, Home Depot, WalMart, etc.
Use the Internet…
You should definitely have an individual website for your property.
You can get a simple site built for under $100.00 using Fiverr, Upwork or other freelance sites. Or you can easily create your own site for free with Weebly or Wix.
You post an auction about your project (your home website), and then companies bid on your job, and you get to see samples of their work and read all their feedback, after you decided who wins your job, you choose a winner. Oh by the way, both of these services cost you nothing, their completely FREE.
Take some pictures with a digital camera of your home and you’ll end up emailing them to the site designer, to post on your site.
Treat this as an online, digital brochure, basically being able to do whatever you can conceive.
You can take a video of the home, with you walking through the home and then have it placed on your site. If you’re intimidated by video, like I was at first, don’t be, because your web site designer can do it for you, very easily.
Now, when ever you talk to someone on the phone or in person, they can quickly look at your property, on the web. This will be the best $100.00 you’ll ever spend on marketing of your home.
3. PROMOTE AND HOLD YOUR OWN “FIRST TIME HOMEBUYER SEMINAR”
If you can get 10 to 15 people in a room, your going to be successful.
Here is how a Homebuyer seminars worked for one investor.
He’s now doing 1 a month, every month. Also, since he’s has a few seminars successfully under his belt, he’s now selling sponsorship spacefor his seminars, to Mortgage brokers, credit repair companies, and he’s even worked out a joint venture with two different realtors who pay him for every property they sell to one of his prospects.
If you’re curious how he’s filling the room, all he’s doing is as follows…
- Flyers in Parking lots, I.E. WalMart, Publix Supermarkets, and local churches.
- Free Advertising on www.craigslist.com
- He uses bandit style signs on the side of the road, 18 x 24, corrugated plastic signs.
- He’s even put up a website that the attendees, can preregister for the seminar.
- He also is giving them an ethical bribe for attending the seminar – he gives them a few books and tapes just for making it to the event. The best part is he received the books for free on the internet and he’s also allowed to give them away for free and even rebrand them as his own books.
I hope these out-of-the-box ideas help you to more successfully sell your investment properties!
Bill Manassero is the founder/top dog at the “Old Dawg’s REI Network,” a blog, newsletter and podcast for seniors and retirees that teaches the art of real estate investing.
