FIVE EASY STEPS TO JUMP START YOUR REAL ESTATE CAREER
Article 2: Prescreen Prospects
by Mike Jacka

The first article in this series focused on locating prospects. The second step in this system focuses on the importance of prescreening prospects. Prescreening your prospects weeds out the non-motivated sellers. If you are actively doing the lead generating items in step 1, then you should have a lot of prospects. Now you have to weed through them to find the motivated ones you are looking for. The ones that need your help. Motivation will be easy to spot once you have gone through a few unmotivated sellers.

We can't help every one. Some people don't need our help or services. They are the ones who want all cash, full price, and have time to wait. That doesn't mean we can't work with them, it just means we can't work with them right now. As time passes, these people may become more motivated. So don't forget about these people. Set up some kind of follow up system for these people, but don't spend too much time on them. You need to focus on finding the motivated sellers and working with them.

Things to look for to spot motivation:

-They are being transferred
-Going through a Divorce
-A pending Foreclosure
-Already bought their new house, and now have two monthly payments
-They have little or no Equity
-Or the house is Vacant

Sometimes their motivation will be easy to spot and they will tell you up front. But most of the time, their motivation will not be so easy to spot. Especially, with people facing foreclosure, they tend to hide or even deny the fact they are behind in payments and about to lose their house to foreclosure.

When talking to these people, you have to take control of the conversation and ask the right questions to determine their level of motivation. Here is a list of some of the questions I commonly use:

1. How much are you asking for the house?

2. If I had it appraised today, what do you think it would appraise for?

3. How did you determine your asking price? (A lot of the time, they will tell you this one even before you ask the question.)

4. Why are you selling at this time? (Reason for Selling)

5. How long has your house been on the market?

6. Is your house listed with a Realtor? (This is an important one to us. Usually it is difficult to structure a creative solution to the seller's problem and still have enough cash at closing to cover the Realtors commission. Sorry Realtors, but that is a big problem when we are dealing with little to no equity spreads.)

7. Last but not least, Is the house vacant? (That is a huge motivation. A vacant house usually means two monthly payments)
I use a Property Information sheet every time I talk to a seller. I keep a stack at my desk and a few in a note book in the truck. (You may use the same form I do: http://realestatepromo.com/freebonus/property_information_sheet.htm)

If it sounds like a good deal, set an appointment and get over there. You need to move fast at this point. If it does not sound to hot now, or the seller is still a little reluctant to set an appointment with you at this time, then put the property information form into a folder and follow up with them regularly.

I have just recently started using a new program for my marketing and follow up campaigns. It is call "Find All The Motivated Sellers You Can Handle! " by Scott Rister. It is a great program. You put the sellers name and address in, and select a category:

Absentee Owner Leads; Code Enforcement Leads; Eviction Leads; Expired MLS Leads; FSBO Leads; Pre-Foreclosure Leads; Tax Sale Leads; and many more.

Each category has pre-made letter and postcard templates, you can use them as-is or change them to reflect your style and make them more personal. The program then sets certain intervals for mailing follow-up letters/postcards. After you put the sellers info in one time, the program takes care of the rest.

Direct mail, and a good follow-up campaign can be very time consuming and tedious work, but this program makes the whole process simple, effective and saves time. All I do is turn the program on once or twice a week and it tells me how many letters/postcards I need to print. Then I hit the print button for the letters. Replace the paper in the printer with post cards, and again hit print. That's it. Well except for the actual mailing them part. But this program takes care of everything else for you.

You can change the sequence and add more letters for a more aggressive campaign and the program does the rest for you. If you are interested in more information visit http://www.realestatepromo.com/courses/scottrister/index.html
In next month?s edition we will discuss step 3, ?Constructing & Presenting Offers.?

Mike Jacka is President of the Minnesota Real Estate Investors Association, also known as MNREIA. He became a real estate agent in 1992 and has since had a diverse real estate background that includes general contracting, rehabs, single family homes, multi-units, rentals and land trusts in addition to acquisition of wholesale, foreclosure, subject to and short sale properties. To contact Mike Jacka and/or learn more, please visit www.realestatepromo.com or call (866) 779-6446.