RE Investors

Top 3 Ideas For Generating Home Seller Leads

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Any business, whether it sells products or services, has to find enough customers on regular basis to survive and grow. All businesses, be they multinational, corporate giants, or small real estate companies, have to generate seller leads through various methods. The top three ideas for doing so are discussed below:

Leverage the Internet:

Our dependence on the internet is growing more and more with each passing day. Just as you, as a real estate investor, use cyberspace extensively for pretty much everything, so do your prospective clients. The first thing a person wishing to buy or sell their house or property, will do is to surf the internet, conduct searches on popular search engines like, Google, Yahoo, etc.. This helps them to narrow down their options quickly without all the leg work and wastage of time. If you want to get anywhere in generating home seller leads for your real estate business, a website will do the job quickly and efficiently.

You must work on your website as much as a business works on its storefront. Feature all of the top qualities you have to offer the customer. Eye-catching images and pertinent information will grab the browser’s attention. Details like past successes and reputable business practices should be discussed. Social proof is another must, as it bolsters your credibility.

Include an online form for inquiry, a live chat window during working hours, and prominently display your telephone numbers, cell phone numbers, and contact person name. Make sure that nothing is left to chance when somebody wishes to get in touch. Optimize your website for the search engines so that it remains somewhere near the top. People are not patient enough to dig deep into the fifteenth page to find your business.

Network & Referrals:

The old way of doing real estate business is still successfully used today. Nothing can replace networking with people and following up on referrals. Circulate with people in your local community and in relevant interest groups. You never know when a person holding your business card will suddenly call you up one evening to sell his or her house. A friend or relative can also put you in touch with someone they know who is looking to sell a property. Never underestimate the power of human interaction. People recall faces and like to deal with real people. A good first impression and your networking skills can get you more seller leads than you probably thought possible.

Local Marketing Efforts:

Besides all of the above-listed tips, local marketing efforts and promotions will also find you quite a lot of seller leads. Send out mailers, hand out flyers and brochures at property fairs, and call up people from lists. Public records list people in need of your services and can be a valuable source for you.

All in all, the above methods will serve you greatly in generating substantial home seller leads.

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Cash On Delivery

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In the normal world of commerce, “COD” means you GET something of value when you pay “cash on delivery”. As is often the case, the Internal Revenue Service has given a new meaning to “COD”. In their lexicon, COD means you pay them cash when you GIVE up something.

If you are the owner of commercial real estate financing with recourse debt and the value of the property is less than the mortgage amount, brace yourself for an introduction to the IRS version of COD. In the situation when the value of your property is less than the mortgage amount and you don’t have enough cash flow to pay the current principal and interest when due, you have four “traditional” options and one contrarian option.

First, you can raise new capital to subsidize the mortgage payments or to pay down the loan to a level that is serviced from the current cash flow. The obvious peril, in this case, is that you may be throwing good money after bad. If the value of the property is more than 20% below the mortgage amount, it may be a very long time before the cash flow grows sufficiently to bring the property value back even with the mortgage amount. This option is less attractive given that in many markets values on certain commercial property types have declined 40% or more and rents are flat or declining while most expenses are rising. Add to that fact pattern the reality that in order to refinance your property at maturity the property will need to be valued at 125 – 135% of the maturing mortgage amount, and you really have to challenge whether it makes sense to pour more money down a rat hole.

Second, if your lender is enlightened about the reality of property values and the length of time it is likely to take for property values to recover, you may be able to convince your lender to “write down” the loan amount. This is when you need to know all about the IRS version of COD, which is “cancellation of debt”. Whether your mortgage is recourse or non-recourse, the amount by which the loan is written down results in ordinary income to the owners. There are certain exceptions, such as bankruptcy and insolvency, to the current recognition of COD income. However, if the property is owned by a pass-through entity, such as a partnership or limited liability company, the exceptions for bankruptcy or insolvency are applied at the partner or member level.

Third, you can capitulate to foreclosure or do a voluntary deed-in-lieu (“DIL”) of foreclosure. In the common vernacular, you just hand the keys to the lender. However, the pain is not over and the IRS will be standing at the exit door to collect taxes on the COD and, in many cases, gain on the sale. If the property was financed with recourse debt, the measure of the COD is the difference between the fair market value of the property and the debt balance. In addition, since a foreclosure or DIL is treated for tax purposes as a sale of the property, in the case of property financed with recourse debt you will have a gain equal to the difference between the fair market value of the property and the adjusted tax basis of the property. In the case of property financed with non-recourse debt, foreclosure is treated for tax purposes as a sale of the property for an amount equal to the debt amount and you will have taxable gain equal to the difference between the debt balance and the adjusted tax basis of the property/

Fourth, the entity owning the property, either a partnership or limited liability company in most cases, may file a petition under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Debt canceled in a Chapter 11 reorganization case is not included in your income if the debtor is under the jurisdiction of the court and the cancellation of debt is granted by the court or occurs as a result of a plan approved by the court. For individual partners or LLC members, the bankruptcy exception to the recognition of COD applies at the partner or member level. Accordingly, if the partnership files for bankruptcy protection and achieves cancellation of debt under the supervision of the bankruptcy, the COD income will still be included in the ordinary income of the partner or member unless the partner or member is insolvent or has filed a petition under Chapter 11. Given the cots of prosecuting a case in the Bankruptcy Court, the stigma associated with bankruptcy filings, and the fact that the individual partners or members may still recognize ordinary income, the bankruptcy option may not be the best alternative.

Given the unattractive consequences of these traditional options to resolving distressed commercial real estate, a distressed borrower must ask what other options are available. There is at least one contrarian firm, Abacus Financial, LLC, that offers a compelling contrarian option. Abacus seeks to acquire well-located commercial real estate at a price greater than the debt encumbering the property, regardless of the value of the underlying collateral. The silver lining for the distressed borrowers is that they are relieved of dealing with the day-to-day harassment by lenders, unpaid vendors, and disgruntled investors AND they accomplish a sale at above-market prices while realizing capital gains, rather than ordinary income.

Before making any decision about how to resolve your distressed commercial real estate you should consult your attorneys and tax advisors and make a “reality check” on when you think the property may recover sufficient value to enable you to refinance without writing a huge check to your lender.

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Best Way To Sell A House Quickly

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One was in a position in which really it needs to sell a house quickly? If it is looking for to be relocated in a new work, the inherited property cannot allow the luxury to maintain or needs fast money to pay to a so necessary operation the basic line is that you need to eliminate now. Like an intelligent person who knows that they are conscious that the real estate agents are not fast or of low cost, and the banks indeed are not known by their speed the ray or processes, but what you can more do? Following its situation a solution is to sell the house quickly, offering a discount to the buyers in cash. It remembers that even a described good buyer has been time, even months, to obtain a bank loan approved and to obtain through deposit in the guarantee. The traditional methods of the options best or the unique one than having?

Perhaps if it knew that it could be able to obtain sufficient money in cash altogether to make a supply. Itself it was that simple. You could even be able to close the agreement for this month’s ends! But that only happens in the Earth of the fantasy, truth? In fact, you are of luck since the investors of real estate are very actually to do indeed that. In fact, he is only one of many examples of how and when an investor of real estate can be involved in any number of properties. So far we will concentrate in a specific scene and that is going to in cash buy a property in money for a fast and easy operation.

Often when a property is going to be sold with a discount that is known wholesale like a sale. In a typical agreement of sale wholesale, an investor of real estate will have a contract by the proprietor to sign the concession of the control of the investors on the sale of the property by a limited time. The contract generally consists of terms that generally are reduced to an agreement to sell the property by a specific price and within a determined term, generally of thirty to sixty days.

The idea to have a contract to sell its property, and much less is sold with a discount, probably it sounds a little fear or it is even strange. They are sure that these contracts are too short, simple, and to the grain. If they were not then nobody signs them! Also, it considers that it does not have to sign a contract before the red is dry and there is no time to think about it. I have reviewed it by its internal legal adviser to help to put its mind in the facility. These contracts to short and sweet, will not take long professional legal time, and, later, not much of their money, to their revision.

The company/signature of a contract anticipates incentives to a buyer in cash since nobody is going to want to put a pile of time and effort in an agreement that does not have the confidence in a signed contract means that the agreement is to means to do and it already makes sure to the buyer that the salesman is serious. In this situation, the buyer knows now that the property is to its disposition and hastens due can be carried out before closing the treatment. The advantage of this type of transaction with the salesman is the speed. All the process of discovery, the supply, to sign a contract, to realize the due diligence, and the final decision is more often is going to be much faster than deals with a conventional loan and real estate agents. As much the score of the salesman and the buyer a victory.

Have an emergency and the necessity to sell a house quickly? You necessity to explore all options. Many people are so happy with their experience of work with an investor of real estate even for returning for the purchase of options. This comprehensible is given to the speed and the avoidance of the rates of traditional real estate.

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