Nancy Wallace-Laabs (00:04) Have you ever just been waiting for a lead to show up in your CRM or hit the MLS if you have buyers? Well, you have already lost the listing to a bidding war or a tech giant referral fee. So if you're relying on active sellers, it means that you're competing on price and commission rather than expertise. So I'm going to be talking about the Dallas Fort Worth area because that's where I'm at. All of the techniques and strategies I'm talking about today can apply to any market. But in Dallas and Fort Worth, the most profitable listings are the ones that never even hit the open market because the agent identified the distress before the homeowner even realized they need to sell. I'm going to be talking about Distress Sellers, specific Distress Sellers, because there's quite a few different categories. But we're going to be talking about life events that trigger 90 % of the probability of someone having to sell their property. So we're going to talk about how to use public data. So it's for free. You can buy lists for this information. But if you're on a budget, You can get this information for free. that positions you as a consultant rather than a salesperson. So most realtors are taught to scrape the MLS, look for sell signs, take pictures of landlord signs when there's a for rent sign, but what if you could find listings without having to drive around, without having to do cold calling, without just using data that is accessible but you know how to use it. My name is Nancy Wallace-Laabs and I've been working with distressed sellers since, I don't know, for almost 20 years now. And what I have found is if you can identify motivated sellers before they... And what I can tell you is if you can identify this group of people that are motivated that need to sell their house, you will have more listings than you know what to do with. So if you've been waiting for that lead to hit your CRM, the MLS, You're already behind the eight ball. So the old way was you would put things out on social media and they would just come into your CRM and then you would send them an email or maybe you would do some cold calling. You would compete when you went out and had the listing presentation. You'd be presenting with every other realtor that was trying to get the listing. And so what are you doing? You're trying to do your own value proposition to help these folks, to tell them how they should price the house, how to stage it. You know, and you're literally fighting over publicly listed inventory. Now, the smarter way to go about doing this is, you know, you have to identify sellers that, that they need to sell even before they know they need to sell, That's kind of what I've built my business on is finding those motivated sellers through what I call life events. So we're going to be talking about some of those life events today and how you can approach those sellers. So what you're going to learn today is I'm focusing on three life triggers. And that you'll have some non-obvious signals to look for. But if you find these, what I have found is that if you can identify these sellers before they even know they have to sell, there's a 90 % chance. that they're going to list and probably sell their house within the next six months. So wouldn't it be nice if you were the realtor that was able to get that listing? So there's hidden inventory sources. Now some of you, if you've been doing this as long as I have, you you may already know about them or maybe you know about them. and you've tried to approach them, but maybe you were just a little off. So we're gonna talk about how to approach distressed sellers because they're different than, let's say, someone who's just relocating across the country because they have a job offer. Distressed people have a lot more going on in terms of the emotionality of why they need to sell. And sometimes they're not prepared. And that's where you can come in to be more of a consultant. and do a consultive sale rather than trying to just come in and do a listing presentation. So the problem first script is what I like to do. So first of all, you have to know what the problem is. So when you're dealing with someone who's in a financial distress, maybe it's through divorce, maybe they're going through foreclosure, I've kind of worked on a lot with pre-probate. This is a group of sellers who someone has recently passed away and they have not found probate. And yes, there is such a group of people out there and yes, they do need your help. So here's my insight. Most realtors, kind of learn the old school way, They're like, okay, we look for for sale signs as we're driving by, we'll run through the MLS for expired. I'm saying that you know what why don't you start looking for life problems? There's a couple things that will always happen so we always have to pay taxes and We always know that people will go through some kind of Hardship whether that's illness or that's death You can be a resource to help those people through those kinds of situations So you don't have to wait until the end to secure your territory. And what I mean by that is if you already know, my gosh, Nancy, I need some help here, you can just reach out and give me a call and I'd be happy to have a 15 minute consultation with you the three big triggers that I have found in North Texas in the Dallas D.F. area. number one, we have the pre-probate and or estate transition. I'm going to just say Collin County, Denton County, and you go right to the records online and you can find a lot of information. Now the thing is, how old is it, pre-probate is a little bit harder because you have to match the property death record, or the property record with the death certificate. But that's kind of been my specialty and I can show you a really easy way how you do that. there's a lot of opportunity, when that life event happens. Number two is a tired landlord. I used to go to eviction court and I would go every Wednesday. And then I would just go there as a networking kind of thing to meet landlords that are having to evict their tenant. And you would be amazed at how many landlords might want to sell their property because they're just tired of being in eviction court. I've worked with non absentee owners where the property is just set. I'm going to get into how I approach those types of owners as well. And the last one. is that tax delinquency. So there could be a couple things there that could be going into the foreclosure or they could actually be on the tax slate. And then of course, then there's also the HOA. So, you you kind of have to know what your niche is and then how to approach when people are going through these different, hardships Now there's some specific signals that I look at, my niche is working with pre-probate, people who have recently passed away and they have not filed a probate. you can still market to the folks, right, to the families who have lost a loved one, as long as you've verified that they have real estate that they might need to sell, you can still be a resource and reach out before they file probate. Why would you want to do that? Well, because you're the first person who's contacted them, and if you approach that family in a certain way, there's a high probability that you're going to be the person that they end up hiring to help them with the sale of their property. You know, all realtors bring value. And if you're, you know, I mean, if we're awake, we should be bringing value. So how is it that you're going to assist these families? What approach can you take when a family is going through a distressed situation? So the distressed part comes where you can identify these potential properties for sale and you become the resource, the listing agent. to get these properties on the market before anyone else. And I just want to talk to you about what I have found over the years. I do work with a lot of different distress situations. So this one happened to be absentee landlord or absentee owner. An absentee owner, it's just the property's been sitting vacant for years and years and years So here's what happened. I sent my marketing materials to this particular property owner. That property had been sitting vacant for more than five years. So when the person called me, I didn't just start off by, you know, they said, I got your materials, and we didn't start talking about the house. We started talking about the history of the house, because I knew that it was old. then I was able to have a discussion about this property. It had been sitting vacant for five years and I was not the first realtor to reach out to this person. This is what we talked about. Our conversation started off about football And we got around to the history of the home and I let him talk and tell me about the history of the home, which was that he had been born in the home and that it was his childhood home. And so I said, know, I thanked him for calling. And I said, you know, I understand that you have an emotional attachment to this home, but did you ever sit down and figure out how much that emotionality was costing you each year? And he said, what? And I said, the house was paid for, but it still had property insurance, it still had property taxes, and as it turned out, he had liens against the property because of the condition of the property. He had complaints from the neighbors, so he was also having to pay the city. So when we kind of put it down on paper, the actual financial cost of not just one year, not two years, not three years, but more than 10 years of where he had been paying for this vacant property, know, almost a light bulb. We were having the conversation over the phone, but you could almost hear the light bulb through the phone line because no one had ever put it to him like that. They had just come at him like, okay, well you can sell it and you can get this much money for the house, but for him, he had been emotionally attached to it and so he never really stopped to think about, ⁓ it's costing him about $10,000 a year to keep this vacant home. And I said, well, if you had $10,000 extra every year, what would you do with that money? And that's how we started talking about me listing the house for him. And do you see how I'm still trying to go after the business, but not in more of an indirect way. But because I didn't approach it as like, ⁓ okay, you need to sell it, here's what I can list it for, here's what you can get for it, I took more of an approach of why was he allowing the house to be sitting there for so long? That's really what I wanted to find out. So as I mentioned, I've been working in the DFW area for quite some time, as maybe some of you. Now, what I wanted to do was kind of break this down into neighborhoods where, Half of the equation is knowing what to look for, But the second part of it is where is the most likelihood that you're going to find that? So you have to do a little market research. And if you're already doing farming and you're looking at areas that you want to grow your business in, then you would want to take this information and drill down. So number one, I've looked at B-class neighborhoods in and around where I live. So Mesquite. Garland, North Richland Hills. So those are older neighborhoods with older population. So you can easily get all the demographics that you need. there's usually high equity, deferred maintenance, ⁓ and owners who've been living there for a long time. I look at it more as a senior neighborhood, if you will. That's what I look at, right? So senior neighborhoods. So that would be what I would call like the B-class neighborhoods. the next thing is out of state owners. Now these lists are easy to pull even from your own MLS. So usually what happens is when the property tax record doesn't match up with the property ⁓ address. So that right there tells you that that's more than likely a non-owner occupied. So the property could be vacant, it could be a rental, And you can do a whole marketing campaign just to absentee owners or landlords. So when I do those searches, those public record searches, I screen out, any LLCs or like investment houses. What I'm looking for are individual owners of properties that they are not occupying. And then you want to look at the 50 % equity threshold. So a lot of times what this signals is that one, the seller will, you know, they'll make out pretty good because they have equity in their property and they might not be so hung up on, you know, getting top, top dollar if they need to sell. So you might be able to approach it more in terms of the cost of holding onto the property and the benefit they would receive if that's what they're looking to do. when they sell their home. that's the gist of this whole video is that, know, it's one thing about knowing your neighborhood. It's, you know, knowing about, your people skills and how you approach people, but also getting to the bottom why would the person want to sell? For me, I just want to work with motivated sellers. That's what I do. That's my business model. Because number one, even if you're just listing it, you want someone that's motivated because if you have someone who's, let's say they're just stuck on a price of a house and it's too high and you know the house is never gonna sell at that price, then how best use of your time is that if you're working with a client that won't come down? Just because you throw their house up on the market and you're hoping that they'll have price cuts and price reduction, that doesn't really help you. to move your business in a more positive income producing way. That's kind what I'm getting at there. So I really like to go after people that there's not a lot of competition to, I am looking for those older neighborhoods with the older homes that have a lot of deferred maintenance. And here's why. ⁓ I do have a big investor client pool. that I sell to. So a lot of what I can offer Distressed Sellers is one that they don't have to fix the house up, They don't have to spend a lot of money, fixing their house up to get to still get top dollar. Now let's talk about opportunity mapping. This is what I like to do. I like to go where I feel like the highest probability of me getting a motivated seller that I can move the property fairly quickly and I'm going to just map it out. So I'm going to use my demographics to go into areas like, you know, Mesquite and Garland in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. They're suburbs where they have older homes. and the price point is not as high. I'm going after kind of more mid range, first time homeowner type of properties, maybe a little bit higher. North Richland Hills, it's very blue collar right now as I'm recording this. So there's a lot of diversity in terms of like the types of housing that I could look at there in the single family spiel, like from two bedrooms to three bedrooms to four bedrooms. Some have garage, some don't. So depending on my buyer's list, I can go in there and I can start talking with sellers and I can approach them with different marketing aspects of the cost of them holding on to their home. depending on the market, like right now we're in a market where homes are sitting on the market a little bit longer. So I have a little bit more leeway when I'm talking to the sellers about, you you can hold out for another 10, 15, $20,000, but then what's it really costing you? maybe they want to move out of state, maybe they're trying to move to a different area, maybe they're trying to move closer to their grandchildren, maybe one person passed away and they need to sell the house to pay for the nursing home. There could be just a plethora of reasons that there's motivation to sell the house. Your goal is to find your opportunity map and then go and market into those areas we're looking for the motivated people, And then in another area of Dallas, we have areas where there's more pockets of vacant properties, high rentals, that kind of thing. So again, you can find these demographics go in and do some research start creating your opportunity map. So especially if you're newer to the business and you're just not really sure where to go for listings there's more inventory on the market, so that means it's very competitive out there. It's very competitive for me to get a listing, for you to get a listing. So that's why I like to create these opportunity areas so that I know, if I find motivated sellers in this area, I have a very high chance of getting the listing So in all my years of working with distressed sellers, here's what I can tell you. If you show up at the door, you're calling them, or they're answering your marketing materials, and you just show up as a listing agent with a presentation on numbers and comps and things like that, you're going to have the door slammed in your face and or maybe politely declined. these motivated sellers that I'm talking about, divorce, probate, pre-probate, Foreclosure, tax lates, these folks are going through a very emotional time. You know, they're stressed out, they're financially stressed, they're just stretched thin and they have a lot of people knocking on their doors. So that's why I'm saying you have to bring more than just value. You have to bring how are you going to solve their issue? How are you going to lift this burden from them? How are you going to set yourself apart from every other realtor that's approaching them? Not just to mention the realtors, but the investors. How are you going to set yourself apart with what you can offer the person? And that's why if you come with the idea that you're helping them, first of all, you're finding out what their problems are. You know, what can you do to alleviate their burden in a compassionate and empathetic way? you want to lead with empathy Not your wallet. sometimes we get a little ahead of ourselves about what the client may need what the prospective client might need so What I'm saying is you need to learn the skills to talk to folks that are under extreme duress emotionally. I have discovered a hidden inventory checklist, if you will, of how I want to get my information. I call it the 72 hour hidden inventory checklist, I pull my list. Basically, every three days, I'm verifying equity. You know, I'm taking time out of my day every day to verify the information. I send a problem solver. What I mean is I'm sending some kind of marketing material that meets the needs of whatever list that I'm pulling, each step builds on the last. Now you can do a lot of this with social proof, you know, so now because of what I've been doing and I speak about it, you know, I partner with funeral homes. Who would have guessed I would have done that? that's because of my work with someone has passed away recently, that's kind of become my niche There's a lot of emotionality going on, there's a lot of grief, there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of questions. It's not the first thing in their mind, I need to sell the house. That's not what they're thinking. What they're thinking is, I have to clean out the house, I have to pay bills, they have a funeral to plan, there may be family coming in, there may be family issues. So you never know what it is. So a lot of times dealing with distressed people, like if it's foreclosure people, you have to act fast because there's a limited time amount. If you're dealing with probate or pre-probate, you know, have a little bit more time because now the time is dictated by the family circumstances. So that's where you can make a difference. So let's talk about the problem first script framework. So standard agents, standard realtors will say, are you thinking of selling? Okay, so that's what happens. People call marketing material, are you thinking of selling? And then the person says yes or no, The problem first consultants will go, how much is this property costing you right now? And if you can get them to focus on numbers, now again, you have to bring your empathy to it. You're have to have a conversation. the difference is, is I want you to think about, you're not just calling them up, hey, do you want to sell? You're talking to them about what their course of action wants to be. What are their goals? Especially if they've lost a loved one. They really don't know if they want to sell the house. Now, in some cases, Maybe the person was sick for a long time, so they know that that's what they're going to have to do. So you want to open with the cost, just the financial burden of keeping the house. And maybe right now that's not a burden, So most of the time though, if a parent has passed away and there's kids involved and maybe the kids live out of town, this is generally the scenario I get. Someone has passed away, the mom or dad. The kids are coming in to take care of the house. The house has deferred maintenance. They've lived there for a long time. And there's a lot of equity in the home. The kids don't really want to take the time or the money to fix up the house. logistically, who's going to manage all the repairs? They just don't want to do that. then you can be that bridge, You can position yourself as the connector. So maybe they do want to fix it up. You know, maybe there's enough ⁓ meat on the bones if you will for them to get more money and they have the time but they need you to help them with you know getting the landscape or getting the house cleaned up you know but you also have to kind of bring it back to them about the cost of all of that like the cost of maintaining the home the property insurance the property taxes because if the property is vacant and now there's going be work on it, they need a different kind of insurance policy. So you need to make sure that you're bringing all that information to the family so they can make a decision based not on emotion at this point, but on the cost of keeping mom or dad's house, then you want to close with clarity. And what do I mean by that? So you're going to identify and help them identify because they've told you what their end goal is, you can have step by step, this is what I can do, this is what we need to do next, and then that way you can walk through it with them This is what it's going to cost. If you sell the home, this is what you gain. So you have to kind of look at all of those and be able to walk them through it. So why does this work in the DFW area? we're working with people that there's a 90 % probability that they're gonna need to sell the house when they have these three big events, which is divorce, foreclosure, and death, especially pre-probate and probate, there could be a longer window of time. when you're working with people going through more of what I call the emotionality ⁓ stress factors, the triggers, it does take a little bit longer just because the family needs to get all of their things in order, Now, I will say this. I actually do get a list, and I actually do market to it. I can teach you, yes, you could do it for $0. But if you don't want to do any cold calling, then your cost is going to be about first class mail. So you kind of have to look at how do you want to market to those leads, and that will dictate your cost. So what I want to leave you with today is number one, I want you to stop competing with other realtors, with me, and start finding your own deals. I have put together a free training, You can also call me directly. if you want to get started, the link is below. if you have any questions, reach out to me
