Aaron Silverman

Due to the combination of too much available information (often incorrect or incomplete), lack of qualified professionals to work with and possible embarrassment resulting from financial difficulties, homeowners facing foreclosure will often play ostrich by ignoring the situation and letting events unfold as they will. This can create a sizable hurdle you must overcome when marketing your services to homeowners facing foreclosure.

Fortunately, almost every homeowner facing foreclosure wants a solution, and that creates an opportunity for you when marketing your services to homeowners facing foreclosure.

Let's look at some facts about homeowners facing foreclosure:
1. Homeowner has some sort of financial duress.
2. Homeowner wants a solution.
3. Homeowner does not know where to look for reliable information.
4. Homeowner does not know which professionals are knowledgeable and reputable.
5. Homeowner might have feelings of embarrassment, depression, etc about his/her financial situation.

If you have a solution for homeowners facing foreclosure, Facts 1 and 2 provide you an opportunity sell your service, make a profit and create a win-win scenario. However, Facts 3, 4 and 5 are obstacles you must overcome in order to sell your service.

Remember, a confused mind will say no, so educating a homeowner on their options gives the homeowner the information needed to make a decision. The key is to provide the homeowner with multiple options and highlight your option as the best option for them. Lead the homeowner to the proverbial water and let them decide to pick your option.

Detractors tell me providing multiple options to a lead is a poor marketing practice, because the lead could choose to go elsewhere. Although that may be true, the sales process for any service marketed to a homeowner facing foreclosure is long. There is a large window of time for the homeowner to change his/her mind, and with all of the information and marketing out there, your client needs to be completely committed to you and your service from the beginning.

By providing the educational information, you accomplish three things with one action: 1 - you provide much needed information to the homeowner, 2 - you start to build rapport with the homeowner and 3 - it is a prescreening tool for you.

Yes, that is right - a prescreening tool. Why waste your time on a lead you will never convert to a client? Why spend a month of your time and effort while the homeowner is simply exploring options? Your time is valuable; give leads their options up front and spend your time on your potential and current clients.

I kinda slipped it in there without pointing it out, but you overcome the obstacle presented in Fact 4 by overcoming the obstacle in Fact 3. By proving the homeowner with useful information and multiple options, you show you are a reliable, knowledgeable professional and start to build rapport with the homeowner. Also, by giving the power of choice to the homeowner, you give the homeowner a sense of control in a financial crunch that has spun out of control, which leads to building more rapport.

How cool is it that two obstacles can be overcome by one action? The only thing better would be if you could overcome all three obstacles with one action.

You guessed it; you can, but to be continued in the next article.

Interested in finding and marketing to your local Lis Pendens? Sign up at www.scdistressedhomes.com/pricing/li.html to receive a free trial of our Lis Pendens Data Lists and start providing your service to homeowners facing foreclosure.

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Aaron

Homeowners facing foreclosure need services and professionals to help them out of their financial situation; therefore, marketing your services to Lis Pendens data lists is valuable for you and the homeowner.

When I started Real Estate Investing in 2006, pre-foreclosures were taught as a source of potential leads. That was a couple of years before the financial and mortgage collapse that resulted in the record foreclosure numbers and has created more foreclosure related opportunities than we have ever seen.

Needless to say, my partner and I quickly saw value in marketing to homeowners facing foreclosure. The big question was how would we find them. Simple, we signed up for www.realtytrac.com. We were surprised to not find any pre-foreclosures listed for the Lowcountry, so we were back to square one - marketing material with no one to market to.

We decided to collect the information for ourselves, and our first step was to scour the newspapers for published Lis Pendens information. In South Carolina, the foreclosure process starts when a lender files a Lis Pendens and ends with the foreclosure auction. By law, the Notice of Sale to set the auction date must be published in a public place and the local newspaper. Our local newspapers were the first place we looked, and your local newspaper is a resource for free Lis Pendens leads.

My partner and I found a huge drawback to looking in the local paper for Lis Pendens filing information. The Notice of Sale occurs about a month before the auction date, which was not enough time for us to market to the homeowners and lost us several months of pre-foreclosure marketing time. We needed to look at the start of the foreclosure process, because the Lis Pendens is filed months earlier than the Notice of Sale.

Plus, do you know how many local papers are in Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester Counties? More than the Post and Courier, and we found Lis Pendens notices in multiple local newspapers. The same might hold true for your area.

Next, we decided to go to the source; we went to the courthouse to collect Lis Pendens records. We spent hours searching and copying paper court records at the County Clerk of Courts. That was tedious and took several hours each week, but we finally had a good number of fresh, valuable Lis Pendens leads. Your county courthouse is your next resource for free Lis Pendens leads.

Those are the two free options we used to get started when we marketed to homeowner's facing foreclosures: local newspaper notices and directly from courthouse records. Unfortunately, rarely is something free; although you can acquire Lis Pendens Filings for no money, how much is your time worth? Time versus money has been, and continues to be, a long time business debate topic, and each business owner has to answer it.

At the time, we did not have an alternative to the time consuming and labor intensive research, but today, you do! There are two paid options to acquire Lis Pendens Data Lists: them and us.

By them, I mean national data listing websites. The best national site we have found is www.realtytrac.com. Although RealtyTrac did not have much coverage in South Carolina in 2006, they now have Lis Pendens filings for every county, just like we do.

Our website, www.scdistressedhomes.com, is the only site we known of that is dedicated to South Carolina Lis Pendens. That is not the only characteristic that sets us apart from RealtyTrac.

We email your Lis Pendens leads in Excel files to your Inbox each week. RealtyTrac requires you to log into their website to receive your leads. Then, they make you copy the information for your lead from their website for each property. Our data delivery method gives you compiled data ready for a mail merge to customize your marketing material.

Our delivery method saves you time, and time is money.

RealtyTrac.com and SCDistressedHomes.com offer a 7 day free trail. Give both of us a try for free, and keep the subscription that benefits you the best.

The next article discusses he key to marketing to homeowners facing foreclosure is to educate and build rapport with the homeowner.

Interested in finding and marketing to your local Lis Pendens? Sign up at www.scdistressedhomes.com/pricing.html to receive a free trial of our Lis Pendens Data Lists and start providing your service to homeowners facing foreclosure.

Did you find this article useful and informative? If so, visit www.scdistressedhomes.com to sign up for our newsletter.

Aaron
www.SCDistressedHomes.com

According to RealtyTrac.com, there were 3,472 foreclosure notices (default notices, foreclosure action notices or bank repossessions) in South Carolina in December. That is 1 in every 600 housing units. That is a large decrease from November; November saw 4,028 foreclosure notices, which was 1 in every 517 housing units.

Although the foreclosure notices decreased from November to December, the foreclosure action is trending upwards in South Carolina. That is to be expected, because our housing market seems to lag the national trend by 2-3 years. 2012 is shaping up to be another rough year for struggling homeowners.

Want to see your county’s Lis Pendens (pre-foreclosure) listings for the week? Sign up for a 7 day trial at
www.scdistressedhomes.com.

Compare their service and our service - 7 Day Free trial for each - www.RealtyTrac.com vs www.scdistressedhomes.com.

Aaron

The last article outlined the Foreclosure Process in South Carolina, and one of the items briefly mentioned was the lender's collection attempts. Lenders can be rather persistant in their collection efforts. Those phone calls and letters sometimes border on harrassment, and that is where you come in.

Homeowners facing foreclosure want the calls to stop and their financial situation to improve. The problem is an internet search for foreclosure or bankruptcy help yields hundreds of thousands of results. With all of that information out there, a homeowner facing foreclosure can become confused, and a confused mind will shut down.

Foreclosure is a scary and confusing process for many homeowners, and those homeowners need professionals to help them find solutions. Whether you are a Real Estate Investor, Realtor, Bankruptcy Attorney or provide a Loan Modification Service, you offer a solution that can help a homeowner in financial trouble.

Most homeowners want to remain in their home, so if you have the tools and services to help keep a homeowner in their home, your expertise is invaluable to the homeowner. Although many homeowners want to remain in their home, some are simply overextended and need to save their credit and avoid foreclosure, so if you have the tools and services to buy or help a homeowner sell their home, your expertise is invaluable to the homeowner.

The combination of the lender’s borderline harassing phone calls and letters, the homeowner’s confusion and desire for a solution creates a situation where professionals with viable solutions are in high demand by homeowners.

Another reason Lis Pendens data lists are a good lead source is many banks are willing to negotiate the terms (amount and/or interest rate) of the loan. I switched from the term lenders to banks for a reason - not all lenders are banks but a vast majority of them are. Not all lenders are willing to negotiate to with professionals helping homeowners; however, since banks face significant pressure from regulators, non-performing assets are not only bothersome but troublesome as well.

Mortgages are assets to any lender, but when a bank's asset turns into a non-performing asset, the banks ability to lend money is negatively impacted, and that in turn impacts a bank's profit. Therefore, it is to the bank's advantage to negotiate the terms of the loan in order to turn a non-performing asset from a liability back into an asset or approve a short sale to remove the non-performing asset from the financial statement.

As you can see, homeowners facing foreclosure need your service and many lenders are willing to negotiate the terms of a non-performing asset (loan) to increase profit. This creates an opportunity for you, as a professional, to help a homeowner find a solution, help a Lender turn a non-performing asset back into a performing asset and you can profit for your services.

With the hundreds of thousands of search results, there is simply too much information out there for a homeowner to sift through to quickly find your service. The question is how do you get the benefits of your service and solution in front of homeowners when they need your service and solution?

The answer is Lis Pendens filings. The next article will discuss how to find Lis Pendens filings in South Carolina.

Interested in finding and marketing to your local Lis Pendens? Sign up at www.scdistressedhomes.com/pricing.html to receive a free trial of our Lis Pendens Data Lists and start providing your service to homeowners facing foreclosure.

Did you find this article useful and informative? If so, visit www.scdistressedhomes.com to sign up for our newsletter.

Aaron

According to RealtyTrac.com, there were 4,028 foreclosure notices (default notices, foreclosure action notices or bank repossessions) in South Carolina in November. That is 1 in every 517 housing units. That is a huge jump from October, and the second consecutive major increase; October saw 3,652 foreclosure notices, which was 1 in every 571 housing units.

Foreclosure action is trending upwards in South Carolina. That is to be expected, because our housing market seems to lag the national trend by 2-3 years. 2012 is shaping up to be another rough year for struggling homeowners.

Want to see your county’s Lis Pendens (pre-foreclosure) listings for the week? Sign up for a 7 day trial at www.scdistressedhomes.com.

Compare their service and our service - 7 Day Free trial for each - www.RealtyTrac.com vs www.scdistressedhomes.com.

Aaron