Real Life Real Estate – Turning divorce leads into listings

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Real Life Real Estate. My name is Dan Smith, and I’m here to help you become more powerful, more productive, and, most importantly, more profitable. This week, what I want to talk about is divorces and using ReboGateway to help you get more listings. Ok? Does everybody want more listings? This is one of those times that I always ask you this, and I always say “nod your head…” You should be nodding your head, violently nodding your head right now. Everyone wants more listings. Ok.

Now divorces are a great place to get listings. Most of the time, when you think about it, people who are getting divorced are going to need to list their home to sell it, so that somebody, they can each put up the equity and pay each other off and all the craziness that happens with divorces. Yes, the divorces are a little crazy, but it’s a great opportunity for us to get business, so we need to utilize it more often.
ReboGateway gives you the information. It tells you, “Hey, there’s a divorce going on in this house. Go out there! Talk to them! Have a conversation with them! List that home! Help them!”

So let’s start doing that a little bit more. But what I want to give you is a little trick that I’ve been having some of my clients do recently when they find out about the divorces on ReboGateway. They then go on out to the houses, they start a conversation, but most of the time do you think that they meet the couple at the door, both husband and wife who are getting divorced? Are they both at the door and having a conversation with them both at the same time? Absolutely not. That doesn’t happen very often at all. What does happen is they meet one of the two. That happens pretty frequently, be it on the phone or face-to-face if they’re out knocking on the door. And when they meet one or the other, right, the husband or the wife typically says, “you know what, we need to sell, it’s something that we’re going to need to do, but I guess I’m going to have to talk to my husband about it. I guess I’m going to have to talk to my wife about it, because we’ve got to get everybody together to go ahead and sign the paperwork, I guess, to get it done.” And guess what. A lot of the time it’s not exactly an amicable divorce. Some times it is, and good for them. But unfortunately a lot of the times it’s not. And when it’s not an amicable divorce, then there’s usually just one person in the house. And that one person is in the house, be it the husband or the wife. Guess what. They don’t live with the spouse anymore, and their conversation is typically “well, yeah, I’ve got to talk to my husband or my wife, and their attorneys, and we’ve got to get the attorneys together and everybody sign off on this thing in order to get it done.”

So here’s the trick.

Here’s what I’ve been having my clients do. Let’s go back to real estate school, when you all took your real estate classes and all got licensed. I want you to think about this. How many people, regardless of how many are on title, 2, 3, 4, 5 people on title, how many people does it take to list the home? Think about that. How many?

1.

Only one person who’s on title, that’s the only signature it takes to get that home listed by you. Now, how many does it take to sell the home? It takes all of them, 2, 3, 4, 5, however many people are on title, they all need to sign off on the sale. But it only takes one to list. And what my clients have had real success with lately is just getting that first signature. If they’re talking to the wife, getting the wife to sign. If they’re talking to the husband, getting the husband to sign. Because, do you know what that does? It sort of locks out the other agent, it locks out the other party. So if the wife signs first, and then the husband says “I don’t like the real estate agent that you chose, I want to choose my own real estate agent…” Well, you know what? He can’t, because you got the listing contract signed, and you got it signed first. You’re going to get the listing now. To have an opportunity with these divorces to go out there and get the first signature and sort of tie them into using you – and you don’t have to deal with the other party, and you don’t have to deal with the attorneys.
People always forget: it only takes one to list! It takes everybody to sell, but get the listing! Then when the husband or the life says “Well, I want to use my own person” and they find out that “you can’t use your own person” because the other one already signed so we’re going to have to go ahead and use him, they just sort of cave and say “okay” because, you know what, legally they have to cave and say “ok”. They don’t have a choice. One to list. So that’s my piece of advice for you. If you’re working with divorces, one to list.

My other piece of advice is, if you’re not working with divorces, you should be using ReboGateway and working with divorces, because there is a lot of money in that piece of the business that’s available for you out there.

Thanks for tuning in this week, and remember, to get what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve never done. I’ll see you next time.