Interviewing Prospective Sellers in Real Estate

Installment #9

For this installment, we will learn how to interview prospective sellers to find the best sellers for your needs. Remember those sellers who are flexible are most likely to work out a mutually beneficial agreement in regards to either price, or terms of the sale. While some sellers are flexible in both regards to price and terms, others will only be flexible for one or the other.

As you are speaking to different sellers, you will come to learn how to feel them out just based upon their attitude and tone of voice; however, until then you need to ask a few specific questions to help you determine if they suit your needs. Once you have asked the necessary questions to make your decision, you need to file the property as well as the sellers' notes away in a file for easy reference. The sellers should be broken down into either good, flexible, inflexible, or rejected.

Obviously, you are not likely to desire working with a seller who is in your rejected pile, unless the property has an incredible either price, or has some other extremely desirable feature. Those who are in the good pile, as those sellers who tend to be flexible in both their price and the terms of the sale. They are the most desirable sellers, as well as a bit harder to find. Flexible sellers represent those who are flexible in either the price or the terms. They are not as flexible as the "good" sellers however, they are still useful.

The last and final group is those in the inflexible category. It is not worth writing these off entirely, after all circumstances may change and someone who was once rigid, may suddenly find themselves forced to liquidate property very quickly and suddenly they are very flexible. These properties can often make the best deal because the seller becomes desperate to get rid of it and move along with their life for some reason or another.