How to fire a homeowner

You know, often times on working with homeowners who are facing foreclosure, they typically have a variety of attitudes when working with you.

Now first there’s the legitimate homeowner who really truly needs your help, in other words, they’re facing foreclosure, they have some legitimate hardships, and they really truly want you to help them solve their problem.  Then there’s the homeowner who is extremely slow in getting documents to you.  In other words, while there was a need for your services and they felt the desire to give you a call, they’re not acting swiftly enough to get you the documents that you need in order to help them solve their problems, and often times this will leave an investor frustrated with the homeowner.  Thus, ultimately not getting the deal and landing the house on the courthouse steps.

Okay, then there’s the “here’s how we’re going to do it” homeowner.  In other words, this is the homeowner who already has their problems figured out.  All they need is someone who’s savvy enough (stupid enough) to do it their way.  In other words, when you are talking to them over the phone the first thing they say is, “Well, I’ve got this cousin, or my brother, once you’re able to negotiate a short sell, is going to buy the house directly from you and in doing so I want you to get a discount of this ‘X’ number of dollars and then sell it for ‘X’ and I want half the profits.”

Then there is the investor and oftentimes you’ll get this, when you’re working with investors, and that is the investor who says, “Here’s exactly how you’re going to do this transaction because I know what short sells are about, I know how they work, I’ve done some myself; however, this is what you’re going to do in order to solve my problem for me.”

When you run across folks like that, when you run into homeowners and investors who are going to dictate the terms of how you are going to help solve their problem, simply fire them.  One of the things I’ve quickly come to discover in this business is that you do not need the homeowner; the homeowner needs you and if they already have the solution to their problem, then why are they calling.

So when you get a homeowner who is trying to dictate the terms of the negotiation, then you simply need to walk away.  Remember this, a homeowner who is a pain in the ass today, is going to be a pain in the ass 30 days from now and will be an even bigger pain in the ass 90 days from now.  So simply never take on a client because you need to.

Only take on a client because you choose to.