Be The Expert!
RJ
Yes. So, can I tell you a story from an investor’s standpoint?
Nicole
Absolutely.
RJ
This happened recently where I tried to get Nicole to work on a lead that I felt like the best situation was to do a short sale.
Instead of going out to the lead, I tried to close it on the phone, right? I realized very early on that short sale was the best route, and like, still to this day, Nicole agrees with me, Short Sale is the best route for this seller, okay?
But because I said, “Let me get you in contact with Nicole.” I had to then fill out Nicole’s information, there was probably, what, a two to three hour gap in between communications? Another investor that I know showed up at the house.
They don’t know anything about short sales. They’ve only been in the game a year. We know them personally, and we love them. But they went out there and said, “okay, you owe X amount, you need money to move, sign the contract”, thinking that they could go sell this house, right?
Well, four or five days later, I get the email from them trying to wholesale it to me, and I’m like, “Bellevue, Bellevue? Cassie what’s that Bellevue? I remember this one”. She’s like, “what, I don’t know what you’re talking about because she was out of town, right? And then it dawned on me this is that short sale, the one that I wanted Nicole and Nicole, she has an automated system, so it’s telling me, Hey, we tried contacting her.
Nicole
I personally called and texted her several times, and then when Kimberly actually made contact with her on Monday, she was like, “I’m getting everything paid off and I’m getting money.”
RJ
Yeah, she did. I am getting money right now. That’s what these people told me. So I called them and I’m like, “Guys, what do y’all think the ARV is? Right? Like, let’s go back to the basics.
Nicole
That’s the worst part of it, you might be trying to close on it, this guy’s trying to wholesale.
RJ
Right. Right. Exactly.
And these people are three months behind and they have the date, they had the foreclosure date. And they see the ARV being higher than I saw, of course, because when we talk about “be conservative”, they’re not being conservative. They’re being aggressive, because they’re trying to get it under contract and they see “okay, hey, we can get contract.”
They went into the weekend all pumped up, because they got a contract, right? But then come Monday, here I come, bashing their dreams, saying, “guys, your ARV is too high”. And this would have been the best situation, and I’m trying to tell them who Nicole is and they’re like “well is Nicole someone that works for you?” And I’m like, “No, we’re two separate companies. But this is this is the best route”.
And now it’s awkward situation where they have it under contract, but in all reality they’ve messed up.
And the reason why I want to step in here is for you guys to fully understand that this is an entirely different tool in your tool belt, right? And you have to be able to make this decision on the fly because you’re messing with people’s lives.
This impacts their lives for the next decade. You know? It would have been done, we would have owned that situation, and they would have been in a great situation. The difference is, someone came in and told them, “you can walk with money.”
Right, who wants to talk to RJ and Nicole then they’re like, “y’all are a terrible solution for me”, what the terrible solution is, because I talked to them and what they want to do, they want to try to find an end buyer who is Hispanic that will owner finance it. That’s what they want to do. So it’s not even they’re trying to sell it to another investor. They’re literally trying to find someone.
And I’m like “do y’all even have that on your buyers list?” “No, but we’re gonna try Facebook marketplace this and that”. And that’s a terrible way of handling this situation. So I just really wanted to kind of reiterate this because it’s your dealing with people’s lives, and I feel like personally, I messed that up.
Like, I didn’t hammer home, “this is the solution”. I was kind of just briefly went over it and “I said we’ll be in contact with you.”
Nicole
The other thing you could have done differently is that, and what especially with homeowners like this, is getting them under contract. RJ could have gotten him under a commitment, a lot of these homes, they pass it on to us, we get them, it’s done.
But if a homeowner is getting heavily solicited, the alternative is, “hey, next time get them under contract”, and then say, “hey, talk to Nicole.” But then even though the contracts, yes, you know, it’s contingent, lender, whatever, at least they feel like, “hey, I’ve signed, I’m committed to RJ.”, so it has a lot more weight. But in that situation, there’s nothing that we can say on the phone, because our reality is not as as great as them thinking about it.
RJ
I’ll be honest with you guys, I got off the phone conversation with with James and Christina, and I told them, I said, “Look, I feel like I’ve messed up here, because I didn’t hammer home the short sale. So if you can’t find a buyer, I’m going to make this right. We’ll take it over another way, a creative way called subject two where essentially we’ll take over the payments and we’ll sell it that way.”
Because I honestly feel like that’s my obligation. I’m supposed to be the expert, and I have The best in the business on my team with Nicole and I’m going “it literally was just because we didn’t make it happen within that two-hour window.
We have the Facebook group, the only short sale group worth being a part of that you can always come and ask questions, as well as the book that I wrote Short Sales Uncensored that you can find on Amazon. So always feel free to reach out to us if you have any more questions or if we can help in any way.