Why That REO Agent Won't Call You Back

You know the sang "it's not about what you know, it's about who you know"?

Never more true than in a market with limited supply and high demand.

Consider the following scenario:

You're an REO agent. You have a property that is deemed "a good value" by cash investors, financed investors, retail buyers, and wholesalers (in order of people you would prefer to work with). Upon uploading the property to the MLS, you get calls upon calls requesting silly information on the property, like what bank owns it or how long it sat vacant. You get even more emails from people asking if the property is still available. It doesn't make sense to call or email any of these people back, because your time is better spent focusing on your listings that aren't selling, not the ones that definitely will sell.

Within a few days, you have 20 offers, most of them over the listing price, 6 or 7 of them cash. One of these will ultimately be accepted and will close. If it doesn't, one of the others will close in its place. If the other offers came from an agent, they aren't your buyer, and they probably aren't worth following up with. If they came directly from a buyer, you have determine whether or not you should spend time with this person. If they have "real cash", then maybe they will get a call back from an assistant. If they don't have "real cash", then its not really worth your time as an REO agent trying to chase down some silly novice investor who thinks they are going to assign a contract.

So why does it matter who you know? Because it matters who knows you. If you're an REO agent, or any agent with a compelling listing, you want to know that the offer that gets accepted will close. How do you know that? Because they closed before. AM's will bring you their good stuff when they know you will ALWAYS perform. Not most of the time. Not this one time I screwed up because I didn't have the funds liquidated from my uncle's super secret safe investment program yet. ALWAYS.

If you have "real cash" and can develop the reputation as someone who will always close, you will get callbacks from REO agents, I promise. You might even get some interest from the AM's that are pulling their strings, wondering what crap they can dump on you, knowing that you'll probably close on a lemon every now and then just for the relationship.

All in all, if you look at things from everyone else's perspective instead of just your own, understanding REO agent psychology (and life in general) gets a lot easier.