Its pretty easy to find contractors to give you estimates these days because they aren’t very busy and they need work $$$.

First, you need to go and look in the places these guys would advertise to get new clients.

The obvious places are:

The yellow pages

The Newspaper

Your Free Weekly newspaper (Pennysaver, Thrifty Nickel, The Flyer, etc)

The not so obvious place to look is Craiglist.org

Go to Craiglslist and click on

Your State

And

Your City

Then click on Services

Here is an example of where this page is in my area.

http://tampa.craigslist.org/bbb/

(this is also a great place to find people to help you with your deals ie: House cleaners, painters, handymen, sign hangers for your for sale signs, etc)

You will see many services here and you’ll find contractors advertising for new clients.

You are their next New Client.

Pick a few ads you like and call them to setup an appointment to give you an estimate.

Make sure you tell them you want to update the house to make it look like it’s in “like new” condition. Tell them to find anything they can that’s wrong with the house and make a big deal out of it.

There are 2 ways to handle paying a contractor for the estimate.

Option A

You can be cheap and try to get the estimate for free pretending that you are actually going to use them to do that work. (you are not). This will result in a very short relationship and you will be looking for a new contractor soon.

A Contractor is not going to continue to give you free estimates without ever be awarding any of the jobs.

Option B

Or you can establish a long term relationship with the Contractor, tell them exactly why you need the estimate and that you want it to come in on the high side and Negotiate a flat fee for providing the estimate every time you need one. This will make your life so much easier by having a contractor on your team you can rely on to get these done for you when you need them done quickly.

I recommend you go with Option B

The licensed contractor estimate is a critical part of your short sale package and your BPO package.

Just get it done and you will be happen with the results of your short sales.

Committed to Your Extreme Success,

D.C. Fawcett

The Business Building Coach to the Foreclosure Industry

Leave your comments Below:

I was talking to one of my Gold level coaching students about this strategy and I decided to post it so you can see it as well.

REDC stands for Real Estate Disposition Corporation. The company was started to capitalize on the wave of Foreclosures and REO properties. The same thing happened during the last foreclosure boom of the early 90’s. Only that time Hudson and Marshall, www.hudsonandmarshall.com , was the company that was aggressively listing bank owned reo properties.

Okay, now for the good stuff. Let’s break it down step by step on how you can find buyers for your properties while letting REDC foot the bill for the marketing. This company is literally filling convention centers with hundred of buyers with all of the marketing they are doing. They are all pre-qualified as well so you know they have cash or credit because they have to bring a deposit if they want to bid on any properties.

1. Go to www.ushomeauction.com and find the time and place that REDC is coming to your town. When they come, they will be bringing hundreds of qualified buyers to a central meeting place where they hold the auction. It’s usually in a convention center. In Tampa, its at the Tampa Convention Center,

Ushomeauction is in 27 or so states. This strategy applies to any company that is doing a lot of advertising so use it where you see fit. If they’re not in your state, find a company that is. See list below for more ideas.

2. On the day of the auction or the night before the auction, go to the area where the auction is being held and post your signs everywhere from all of the main roads and highways on all of the corners and turns leading up to the meeting place. These signs should be made to attract attention. I use handwritten signs that say “Foreclosure, Need to Sell Today” with my phone number on them. You can also Post your “Handyman Special” or “Investor Special” signs with your website address and phone number on them

This is the language that attracts buyers because they think you are motivated. We get tons of calls from these signs. I have a guy that puts up signs for me and we pay him $1.00 per sign. After he’s done, go out and drive around the streets to make sure he did what he said he did. If you don’t check up on your sign hangers, they will start to cut corners.

Your signs should be up before the auction starts and they should be up when it ends so you can get the traffic going to the auction and the traffic leaving from the auction.

3. Add all of the leads that call you or come to your website from these signs to your
buyer’s list. Make sure you get their email address when they call. Now you have a qualified list of buyers you can email to for every new property you get. Your properties will be sold before you even get your real estate short sales approved.

If you were to do all of the advertising that REDC does to attract these buyers, you would be spending tens of thousands of dollars like they do. Now you got all of these buyers on your list from their marketing efforts.

Let me know what else you want to learn about Foreclosure investing and I will post a new lesson for ya. Just submit it as a comment below

Here are some other auction sites you can check out as well:

mylandhome.com
ushomeauctions.com
ushomesauction.com
homeauction.com
ushomesauctions.net
firstpremiertrust.com
redcpublicsale.com
studio-auction.com
quickreo.com
hudsonandmarshall.com
auctionaz.com
countyrecordsresearch.com
kwiauctions.com
flhud.com
hudhomesnow.com
foreclosureconnections.com
hudsonmarshall.com
propertyauction.com
realtybid.com
las.interealty.com

Let me know what else you want to learn about Foreclosure investing and I will post a new lesson for ya. Just submit it as a comment below. Don’t worry about the section where it says username. Just put in your name or anonymous.