ing down, and you still may be able to make some Quick Cash because of the great terms.

11. 100 Percent Financing A variation of nothing down is 100 percent financing. We may have a worried seller who has to sell the property and is willing to finance the sale rather than lose all his or her equity. This is one of those phrases that we never pass up when we encounter it.

One thing to look out for when you see 100 percent financing is a property that will go with VA financing. This means the seller will cooperate with a VA buyer. Although there is no down payment for the VA buyer, this is not seller financing that you can use as a real estate investor.

12. Motivated Seller A motivated seller is the right seller. As a real estate investor you are looking for motivated sellers. Sellers in pre-foreclosure are motivated sellers. A motivated seller might just give you the deed to their property and walk away!

It would be fair to say that all the sellers with whom we have done business in the foreclosure arena are motivated. When we encounter sellers who are not motivated, we usually have a very hard time doing business with them.

13. Lost Job/Laid Off The color pink is an anachronism from the twentieth century when people actually got a pink slip to let them know that they were either fired or laid off. In the twenty-first-century economy, companies want fewer workers doing more work.

As a real estate investor, when you see lost job or laid off in a real estate ad or when one of your personal contacts gives you an alert about someone losing a job, more than likely there is a real estate deal to be made. It is a fact that most people live paycheck to paycheck. When they lose the paycheck, the family home may not be far behind.

Advertise

Sometimes a well-placed advertisement in the newspaper or notices posted on public bulletin boards in supermarkets or business establishments can place an inquisitive owner in contact with you in the pre-foreclosure stage. We have had continuing success with the following verbiage as a newspaper, bulletin board, or Internet ad.

MISSED YOUR PAYMENT AGAIN? Private party will share ways to save

your home/protect your equity. Learn 8 ways to avoid foreclosure. Free! Call (817) 555-1212

Searching the Public Record

There are two ways to search the public record to glean information about foreclosures or potential foreclosures. You can do it yourself. Or you can pay a foreclosure service to provide you with the foreclosure information.

Do It Yourself For most of you, the public records are at your local county courthouse. For some of you, the public records may be at your city hall. More and more, you can access the public records through the Internet.

The problem with checking the public records yourself is the tremendous amount of records there is to check. Thats why title insurance companies have to do a title search on a property before they will issue title insurance. This process can take several weeks. The title insurance company will issue a preliminary title report as a prelude to issuing a policy of title insurance.

We recommend you plan on an entire day to visit the county recorders office for your county. You will probably find the public records section buried deep in the bowels of your county courthouse.

Ask for Help Ask for help from the staff to direct you to the foreclosure postings for the current month. Once you have the legal description of the property from the foreclosure posting and the property owners name, you can look up the property in the public record and also check for liens against the owner.

The property record will reflect any liens against the owner. If you are going to do business with a new buyer, you might also want to check the buyer out. For example, if you are going to flip a foreclosure prop-

erty and carry back financing, this would be a good idea. Sometimes the new buyer will bring clouds to the property title because of liens associated with the buyer personally, like IRS liens.

Brain Trust Divorce is the number-one cause of property foreclosures in this country. A Brain Trust hint for those of you who like being detectives is to follow the public record on filings for dissolution of marriage (the official name for divorce). Then make contact with property owners who are involved with the divorce. This may give you a head start on identifying properties that are headed down the foreclosure path.

Foreclosure Service You can get information about foreclosures from a foreclosure service. A typical price may be $35 a month for the foreclosure list for your county. A typical price for the year may be $225. Shop around because there may be more than one foreclosure service in your area.You dont need anything fancy; just the basic information will do.

We recommend spending the money for a one-month copy. If you decide you like working foreclosures after the notice of default is posted and are going to get into it big time, then pay for six months or a one-year subscription. If this is not the foreclosure phase you are interested in, then you havent spent too much money for nothing.

Foreclosure Letter For some of you, face-to-face contact with strangers about a subject of such a sensitive nature as foreclosure may prove uncomfortable. Also, it may be tough for property owners facing foreclosure to come to grips with their shame and embarrassment. For both of these reasons, a letter campaign may be a good method to consider in your pursuit of eligible properties.

Although nothing beats personal contact, a program of contacting owners in distress via mail is often the only way of reaching owners who are difficult to find. They may be occupying the property but have an unlisted or disconnected telephone number. They may have vacated the property but left a forwarding address. Just as in the personal contact and telephone meetings, your letter should be honest, sincere, and offer the owner hope.

In addition to the letter, we want you to include a picture of the property, which will create a better impact for the owner. The picture will show the owner that you have a strong interest in the property. After all, you came out to look at the property to take the picture! Make sure you keep a copy of the picture for your files should the property owner contact you at a later date.