Lisa and Jim's Northern Nevada Real Estate Blog: June 2008

I'd really like to know which "Pay for Referral" services AR Members have found to be valuable and worth the cost and which services are Shams and Rip-offs!

I recently joined Reply.com ... a referral service that gathers leads and sends them out to agents in the local areas for a fee.  It sounded wonderful ... the theory is.  Yet, what I have found is that the leads are gathered from a huge variety of sites and many of them aren't really viable real estate leads.  

One example ... I received a referral from Reply that was a friend of mine and a local agent who works for another office. I don't think she will buy or sell from me so, of course, I declined the lead.   Two leads were homes already listed; one was a man who logged into a site promising they would buy his home.  He got mad at me because he thought he would be contacted by a home buyer - not an agent. 

So ... any tips or ideas?  Who have you used and what has been successful for you?

I think I've unlocked the secret to actually making money with short sales!  I've worked hard all year on a variety of "Short Sales" with a variety of circumstances and a huge variety of lenders. 

After 6 full months of diligently pursuing the listings, contacting the lenders, presenting the offers, thousands and thousands of pages of faxed and re-faxed contracts, and following through with the escrows:  these are the final results ... ( Drum Roll Please!!!)

  7  Short Sale Listings.

11  Offers to Purchase.

  8  Accepted Offers that were submitted to Lenders.

10  Different ‘Negotiators" or "Loss Mitigators" or what ever else they call themselves.

  5  Frustrated Buyers who walked after the time for Lender approval had come and gone, usually weeks   and weeks after the approval time had expired..

  2  Contracts still pending that we are trying to obtain "Lender  Approval" on and close.

And ...

  1 (count it ... ONE) Closed Escrow! 

So ... after considerable reflection on the matter ... I have come to the conclusion that the only agents making any money on "Short Sales", are the agents who are teaching and selling the "How To  Make Money with Short Sales" Classes.