If you had been watching the real estate foreclosure investing market closely during the massive housing boom of 2000-2005, you could have seen the current foreclosure crisis coming; and with it, the many foreclosure investment opportunities which have proliferated nationwide.
In the last two years mortgage lenders have been reporting dramatic increases in defaults and foreclosure rates nationwide causing many sub-prime lenders to go under. Many real estate investors turned their attention to buying foreclosures. But what you may have seen is just a tip of the iceberg.
Will You Be Able To Capitalize On This Foreclosure Boom? On the surface it seems easy enough. Get a list of properties in default. Contact homeowners. And get the deal done at a juicy discount, before the bank takes the house. Then you can fix it up and flip it, or keep it as a rental with an instant built-in equity profit. Right? Well, not quite.
Some people do extremely well with their foreclosure investments, making more than enough to support themselves, even being able to finance a luxurious lifestyle on their earnings. If youre not careful though, you could also lose vast amounts of money in this business.
Very few real estate investors actually succeed in foreclosures on a consistent basis. Why? Because, they're using the wrong approach in a very crowded market.
How Will You Differentiate Yourself in a Crowded Foreclosure Investing Field? To say it's crowded is a huge understatement. The field of foreclosures is probably the most competitive area of real estate investing. It routinely gets more attention from mass media. So more people flock to pursue it. Hundreds of investors in your metro area are mailing to homeowners facing foreclosure. They're even harassing homeowners on the phone and knocking on doors.
Any homeowner who is looking at the possibility of foreclosure is probably being deluged with offers from other investors, along with everything else theyre struggling with. Your mailings will likely be just one of many and it may be destined for the trash! That is, unless you can manage to set yourself apart from the competition; keep reading to find one way to do this.
Take An Ethical Approach To Help Homeowners Facing Foreclosure. Most people who are in danger of losing their home are not that interested in talking to a property investor about selling their home. More than likely, they perceive these investors as vultures preying on the misfortune of others.
So, if you want your phone to ring with people in foreclosure, contact them with an offer to keep the home.
Move For Advantage In Foreclosure Investing - Giving Homeowners the Option to Stay in Their Homes Instead of Buying It. For starters, giving homeowners a chance to stay in their homes is the ethical thing to do, plain and simple.
Yet another reason is, you'll actually make money doing it. You can help them negotiate a repayment plan with their current lender (the process is called loss mitigation) and collect a fee for your service. There're several companies nationwide with an in-house list of Loss Mitigation department contacts for literally every lender in the country that will do all the work for you. So, even if you never buy a single home, with tens of thousands of foreclosures in your hometown, offering loss mitigation services could turn into a lucrative income stream by itself.
Last but not least, this is also a highly profitable route to foreclosure investing. In many cases, the loss mitigation process will not work out for the homeowners and you will end up buying their home anyway. And whom will the homeowner turn to when they find that their best option is to sell? You guessed it, the foreclosure investor who tried to help them keep their home. Thats how the cookie crumbles back to foreclosure investing.
In the last two years mortgage lenders have been reporting dramatic increases in defaults and foreclosure rates nationwide causing many sub-prime lenders to go under. Many real estate investors turned their attention to buying foreclosures. But what you may have seen is just a tip of the iceberg.
Will You Be Able To Capitalize On This Foreclosure Boom? On the surface it seems easy enough. Get a list of properties in default. Contact homeowners. And get the deal done at a juicy discount, before the bank takes the house. Then you can fix it up and flip it, or keep it as a rental with an instant built-in equity profit. Right? Well, not quite.
Some people do extremely well with their foreclosure investments, making more than enough to support themselves, even being able to finance a luxurious lifestyle on their earnings. If youre not careful though, you could also lose vast amounts of money in this business.
Very few real estate investors actually succeed in foreclosures on a consistent basis. Why? Because, they're using the wrong approach in a very crowded market.
How Will You Differentiate Yourself in a Crowded Foreclosure Investing Field? To say it's crowded is a huge understatement. The field of foreclosures is probably the most competitive area of real estate investing. It routinely gets more attention from mass media. So more people flock to pursue it. Hundreds of investors in your metro area are mailing to homeowners facing foreclosure. They're even harassing homeowners on the phone and knocking on doors.
Any homeowner who is looking at the possibility of foreclosure is probably being deluged with offers from other investors, along with everything else theyre struggling with. Your mailings will likely be just one of many and it may be destined for the trash! That is, unless you can manage to set yourself apart from the competition; keep reading to find one way to do this.
Take An Ethical Approach To Help Homeowners Facing Foreclosure. Most people who are in danger of losing their home are not that interested in talking to a property investor about selling their home. More than likely, they perceive these investors as vultures preying on the misfortune of others.
So, if you want your phone to ring with people in foreclosure, contact them with an offer to keep the home.
Move For Advantage In Foreclosure Investing - Giving Homeowners the Option to Stay in Their Homes Instead of Buying It. For starters, giving homeowners a chance to stay in their homes is the ethical thing to do, plain and simple.
Yet another reason is, you'll actually make money doing it. You can help them negotiate a repayment plan with their current lender (the process is called loss mitigation) and collect a fee for your service. There're several companies nationwide with an in-house list of Loss Mitigation department contacts for literally every lender in the country that will do all the work for you. So, even if you never buy a single home, with tens of thousands of foreclosures in your hometown, offering loss mitigation services could turn into a lucrative income stream by itself.
Last but not least, this is also a highly profitable route to foreclosure investing. In many cases, the loss mitigation process will not work out for the homeowners and you will end up buying their home anyway. And whom will the homeowner turn to when they find that their best option is to sell? You guessed it, the foreclosure investor who tried to help them keep their home. Thats how the cookie crumbles back to foreclosure investing.
About the Author:
Imagine having preforeclosure owners literally eat out of your hand. This foreclosure investing strategy will help you get there.
