Winning Through Intimidation by Robert Ringer

Author:Robert Ringer [Ringer, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Tortoise Press, Inc
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Advancing the Ball to Midfield

Finding a market for the properties I had under contract was the least difficult of the five selling steps, because it's to a buyer's advantage to look at as many deals as possible. And since a buyer normally has no financial obligation to an agent, he welcomes any and all submissions. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose by looking.

The catch is that most buyers are not really buyers at all. I wasted an enormous amount of time, effort, and money before I finally realized that most people who claim to be real estate buyers seldom, if ever, actually buy anything. Just as sellers are continually able to lure real estate agents into working on unmakeable deals, so, too, are agents seduced into wasting a great deal of time and effort talking to phony buyers.

I cannot imagine a more sadistic set of circumstances than a well-meaning but naïve real estate agent trying to sell an unmakeable deal to a non-serious buyer. Any agent who allows himself to get into such a situation ends up feeling like a ping-pong ball, with the would-be seller and non-serious buyer being the paddles.

How do you spot a non-serious buyer? First, you have to understand that even though an individual or company is listed as a buyer in some real estate directory does not mean that he's a serious buyer. Second, no matter how big a real estate company may be, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is actively involved in the purchase of properties. In fact, I found that the vast majority of public companies listed in real estate directories are focused on specialty fields such as hotels and nursing homes, building their own properties, or making interim mortgage loans.

Even those who really are interested in purchasing properties are often "out of the market" at any given time. (That is to say, they are not currently purchasing properties because they either don't have enough cash available or are concentrating their efforts on problems with existing properties.) So even though the names of prospective real estate buyers are readily available to any real estate agent, it's wise to make the effort to qualify such buyers before sending them submissions.

Over a period of time, I became adept at spotting non-serious buyers, because they all tend to talk and behave in the same manner. For example, if you ask a non-serious buyer about his guidelines for purchasing properties, he will most likely tell you that he doesn't have any guidelines and that he's "willing to look at anything." But the fact is that most serious buyers do have definite guidelines, because they know exactly what they're looking for.

Another tip-off to a non-serious buyer is that he tends to dwell on questions of secondary importance, such as those pertaining to location, construction, and/or age of the property. As I previously pointed out, such questions are reasonable, but not until the buyer is first satisfied with the numbers and has decided that he has a definite interest in purchasing the property.

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