Rehab Investment Leads - How to handle them and how to get more!

By:Bruce W. Ford

Two Power Tips!

Here are a couple of power tips for dealing with your rehab investment leads. (By leads I mean potential folks who will eventually buy or lease your properties.)

Power tip 1: Use an answering service.

- I pay $8.95 per month for a local voice mail drop. Why? Folks usually don't mind leaving their name and number and more importantly, you can respond to messages when you are in the frame of mind for dealing with them. It might work out call leads back at the same time everyday. Now you may get their answering machine, so now is the time for a longer message.

- You can use an elaborate message explaining about your properties with the voice mail number, but I found it more effective to use a simple, "Please leave your name and number and we'll return your call as soon as possible" resulted in more messsages left. When I used a long message, I had a lot of hang-ups. With the simpler message, the hang-ups dropped to almost nil.

This is a tremendous stress reliever, and saves the phone ringing all day, everyday.

Power tip 2: Get signs out all over town!

The more the phone rings, the quicker you will sell or lease your rehab real estate investment, right?

I'll bet there are other investors who absolutely hate the part of this business that involves amswering calls and matching buyer or tenants with properties. I know several of these! Busy investors would love to screen the folks who don't have the money for their houses, or are just calling out of curiosity.

- Find that investor and offer to screen his incoming leads and send only the qualified leads to him or her.

- Learn that investors properties and how he structures his sales or leases or lease-options.

- The investor puts out your signs and you answer calls. (You might be able to make a little money for this service.)

- Call messages back, describe the property, match them with one that fits them, find our their financial situation, send them to drive by any properties that might fit.

- Pass on any qualified leads to your investor.

- Do try to place folks with the investor's properties, but naturally it won't fit for some of them. Now you can say you have X,Y and Z properties, which will likely include some of yours.

I only answer calls for the other investor.. I don't meet folks, collect money or do paperwork for other investors. I leave it to them to close the deal for themselves. Someone with enough energy could offer the whole package, but I don't. My goal is to help myself by helping someone else.

This approach works if your don't overload yourself and try to screen calls for many other investors. I recommend find one busy one and that will likely be enough to help fill your properties.

In addition it will only work if you and your other investor fill their properties. So, resist the temptation to push folks toward your properties. The increase in the numbers of calls and pool of properties to match folks with will do it's own magic without you favoring your properties. Let the chips fall.

I used this approach and it's working great. Calls have tripled and we are placing folks in properties quicker...and that allows me to keep acquiring new properties.

Bruce W. Ford
Article http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=74845

Bruce W. Ford is the editor of Rehab-Real-Estate.com. Get his important Special Report entitled "12 Things Real Estate Investment Gurus Won't Tell You" at Rehab-Real-Estate.com.