Ensure A Successful Close By Following Up
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(As a real estate investor, you often sell properties for wholesale.)
You pray that everything in the deal goes smoothly, yet it rarely does. It is especially frustrating when you get all the way to closing time and the deal is ruined because of minor mistakes or even worse, a lack of attention to details.
To ensure all these things work in your favor, you need to make sure that every thing is how you want and need it to be on closing day. According to the article, “Follow Up - the Key to Successful Closing,” written by Lou Castillo and posted on reiclub.com, explains the importance of follow-up skills and how to act upon them.
“If everyone always did everything they said they’d do, we’d all be a lot richer. Unfortunately, tasks are overlooked, and the ball is often dropped. If you want to have successful closings, you must have strong ‘follow-up’ skills to catch problems early in the process. Follow-up on everyone and everything.”
If you are not attentive and keep a watchful eye on the closing process everything can fall apart during even the slightest wink.
For example, you’re selling a house for wholesale and have just 30 days to get it officially closed before the contract with the seller expires. You locate a buyer who can obtain a loan and close before the contract expiration. Then just a couple of days before closing you find out that the loan isn’t ready and closing must now be delayed two weeks. In the meantime, the seller gets another offer for more money and this buyer will close; you lose the deal.
To avoid this scenario you need efficient follow-up skills. This just does simply mean to stay in touch with the buyer to make sure every thing is going according to plan with the closing details.
“Then we learned that the buyer is often a newbie and clueless of what needs to be done. Mortgage brokers just usually respond ‘Everything looks great’ until they can’t close the loan. So the real trick to following-up is to speak to the final decision maker for each step. This works whether you’re selling a retail house or a wholesale house, or even if you are the buyer/borrower.”
The ultimate goal is to close without any unnecessary delays.
The first step is to follow-up with the broker or lender to confirm that all of the application paperwork was submitted. If not, find out what is still required.
“Determine if the lender requires a termite letter, appraisal, and a survey (most lenders do). If so, have they all been ordered? When is each to be completed? Keep following-up until you verify that each has been delivered. You also want to verify that the appraisal was sufficient for the loan.”
Once the broker has forwarded the paperwork to the lender, you need to verify that the loan has gone to underwriting. If not, why? If so, was the loan approved? Do any conditions need to be met? Once all the necessary conditions are met, have the loan returned to and approved by the underwriter.
Verify that the closing has been scheduled with the attorney, and that they have cleared title. Find out if and when the loan package will be forwarded to the attorney. Then remind all of the players of the date and time of closing, to bring a picture ID to closing, and to bring any funds required in a certified check.” This may sound like a lot of busy work that other people should be held responsible for, but since you will be directly affected if certain actions are not performed, it becomes your responsibility.
There is no excuse for losing a sale due to a sloppy closing process.
