Have someone else do it for you.
Short sales get dealt with just like everything else in my life that even remotely smells like stressful labor; they get delegated. Outsourced. Sub’d out. Avoided at all cost. The purpose of this lesson is to encourage you to do the same. Whether it's short sales, or something else that can make you a lot of money, but that you hate.
Life is too short to do things you hate.
Don’t you feel the same way? Did you know you don’t have to do things you don’t like? You are not a prisoner. You’re free.
I spent ten years of my life doing what the world considers “real” work. I’m done. Real work blows. Who is to say what is real and what isn’t anyways?
“Reality is an illusion. Albeit, a persistent one.” – Albert Einstein
Something wonderful clicked inside my head a few years back after my dangerous escape from Cubic-Hell. It’s weird because it just evolved kind of naturally. The only way I can describe it is a complete, 100% aversion to doing anything at all that I don’t find enjoyable…and the ability to actually get away with it.
How to outsource all your unwanted “duties” in life is an amazing, life altering skill to develop. But it's also too broad to easily drive my point home with here. Let’s focus on the subject of short sales for now.
I love my life.
Let me give you an insider look at a typical transaction on a typical day in my most NON-typical life:
One of my student’s cell phone rings (I do all my work with students now. I don’t have time for any of my own marketing anymore).
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Ring!
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They answer and take down some brief information about the situation and email the lead over to me.
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I take a look at it and we fax over an offer without seeing the property.
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The seller accepts it and faxes it back.
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We send out an email advertising the property for $10,000-$50,000 more than we put it under contract for.
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Someone calls me and buys it.
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Title company sends us a check.
17 minutes work total. I never left Starbucks. Tough life; I know.
Now let me give you an insider look at a typical short sale transaction.
Thank God I do not know this from personal experience:
You’re in an office that resembles the office scene in The Matrix where everything is greyish green and weird and lame.
The phone rings, but this time is sounds a little more eery for some reason. It rings in slow motion. Rrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnggg. Like it’s the scary guy from the movie Scream calling and you know it.
You sense impending manual labor in your near future, and some sick part of you is wondering if you murder yourself violently is there any way you can still go to heaven (probably not).
The lady on the other end is hysterical. She’s losing the house to auction in two weeks and she needs you to close tomorrow with cash. Your worst nightmares are confirmed: you are indeed about to do alot of work that you hate. You wish it would’ve been the Scream guy calling instead and that he would stalk you down and end your misery quickly.
You spend the next hour on the phone going over all of her options with her. You’re trying to nudge her in the direction of allowing you to do a short sale. By the way way, for those of you who may not know, a short sale is nothing more than going directly to the seller’s bank and offering them less than the amount of the loan. She finally agrees to see you in person.
You drive an hour and a half to the seller’s house. You’ve brought a notary with you because her signature on the deed transfer has to be notarized (so far as I recall).
That’s real convenient. You don’t even like your notary. The drive over is awkward. You spend three and a half hours listening to the seller’s genuinely sad story before talking her into giving you the deed to her house.
You leave depressed for the next 3 weeks.
Now the real fun begins.
You submit the short sale package to the bank and wait about…a month. In the meantime you meet the bank’s appraiser back out at the house (hour and a half drive) and attempt to use every NLP Jedi mind trick you know of to influence his appraisal. It’s a $400,000 house on a golf course, but because you’ve gone through someone's fancy course and know what to say, the appraisal comes back at $99,000.
LOL So far so good.
I failed to mention that during this whole time you have also been attempting to market the property to a suitable buyer. To this end, you have physically fixed the house up (ew), given it to a Realtor to list (double “ew”), and some other stuff that I’m sure I’m forgetting but will remember later after it’s too late.
Why are you doing this all in advance when the short sale hasn’t (and may never) even been approved? Because you have to be ready to move at the speed of light once that short sale is approved. You’ll have 30 days. That’s it. Use it or lose it.
So the stars align, you find your buyer, and the bank approves the short sale. Happens all the time. Top notch short sale investors make a boat load of money; don’t get me wrong. They just work 90 hours a week is all. And as we all are well aware of by now…that’s against my religion. :–)
Now, you just sit back and wait for the closing date. Simply stay on top of the buyer. Make sure his loan goes through, he closes, and you don’t lose the house back to the bank. Well, in this case – it doesn’t, he doesn’t, and you do (lose the house that is).
Just happened to a friend of mine yesterday. Bummer. Do 10-30 houses at once, simultaneously, non-stop, and at all times of life, and a decent number of them will actually go through. Welcome to paradise. Total time spent – 2 months.
Which Would You Rather Have?
17 Minutes in Starbucks?…Or 2 Months In Hell?
Ah, but alas – we are not forced to answer such limiting questions as these because we do not dwell in the parched land of “either-or” thinking! We live in the Promised Land of abundance where “both-and” is the only way to fly. We needn’t limit ourselves. We can have both the luxury of Starbucks and the fruits of the hellacious labor…without doing the labor!
“Preston, please tell me how to have the luxury of Starbucks and the fruits of the hellacious labor.”
Ok. You do it by spending your time doing what you find enjoyable while outsourcing everything else. In this case, you are outsourcing your short sales.
There are two ways to go about doing this. You can either find a company that will do nothing more than process your short sale with the bank and hand it back to you or you can find someone who will do absolutely everything (and I mean everything). In the case of the former, you are paying these people about 35% of the total profit while doing alot of work still. In the case of the latter, you are getting a 25% finders fee (usually) and doing absolutely nothing but emailing leads over.
Guess which one I do. Yeah, that shouldn’t be hard right? I take 25% and do nothing.
Currently I have THIRTY FIVE deals in with my short sale guy. I have no idea where he’s at with any of them and frankly I’m not overly concerned. I simply get checks from him every week due to deals closing that I have nothing to do with. Free money as far as I’m concerned.
If you want the situation I have, you are going to have to look around and find someone reliable who knows what the heck they are doing. This will take some time. Maybe a hungry investor. Maybe a hungry Realtor. The guy I use is the best in Florida hands down. He has buyers lined up waiting for all these deals to clear with the bank. It’s awesome.
Again, in case I have not been clear – DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME DOING THIS STUFF YOURSELF. Your time is better spent drumming up new deals.
Dang this was a lot of typing. I’m late for my Muay Thai class. Later.
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Stop doing stuff that you hate. Be creative, innovative and fiercely determined to find a way to only do stuff that excites you and makes you happy.
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Unless you love short sales, start outsourcing them. You can either find a company that will do nothing more than process your short sale with the bank and hand it back to you or you can find someone who will do absolutely everything (and I mean everything). n the case of the former, you are paying these people about 35% of the total profit while doing alot of work still. In the case of the latter, you are getting a 25% finders fee (usually) and doing absolutely nothing but emailing leads over.
Preston Ely
is a real estate investor, serial entrepreneur, life coach, musician and philanthropist. CEO of Real Freedom, Inc, one of the most influential internet-based information publishers in the world, owns the largest Anytime Fitness Gym in the United States, is recording a music album with Atlantic Records, sits on the board of Advocates Of Love Orphanage, and has a non-profit charity assisting the poor and oppressed in Cuba with both their physical and spiritual needs.
With over 200,000 subscribers to his email newsletter, he is rapidly fulfilling his mission on earth, which is to glorify God by setting people physically, mentally, financially, and spiritually free through his music and his message of FREEDOM. Preston is 37 years old, lives in Tampa, FL with his wife Ashley, where he spends most of his time reading, writing, and practicing mixed martial arts.