Seller Objections To Lease Purchase

A large percentage of the mail we receive are from people that complain that sellers don't want to do a lease purchase, they just want to sell their house. Or sellers come up with too many objections. My questions to those individuals are:

1. How soon after a property is listed are you calling? If you are calling only 2-4 weeks after a house is listed, sellers are not as interested. They still believe they will sell their home.

2. Are you following up on those sellers who say they are not interested now? While right now they may not be interested in lease purchasing their home, they might be six months down the road. Remember you are not in this business for the short term, but the long term.  So be sure to follow up with every call you make. Your follow up can take the form of a call or correspondence. Personally, I like to send a letter. It allows me to send a business card and tell that person again how I can help them with my program.

3. Are you building a rapport with the seller? If you are just calling and asking if a seller wants to do a lease purchase or not, you are NOT building rapport. You are also not getting any information on that home at all. You also can't do any follow up even if you wanted to. This is why you need a telephone script. A good telephone script allows you to build a rapport with the seller. It also gets all the information I need to decide if I even want to do a lease purchase on this property. I do not waste my time going to look at property, or setting up a meeting without having all the information about a property (physical, pricing and financial).

4. Are you telling the seller the advantages of lease purchasing their property? That they will get their asking price or even higher. That you have a large pool of tenant buyers that you can have drive by immediately. That these tenant buyers want to purchase their own home, not just rent. That you can get them a higher monthly payment. That you can get them get positive cash flow each month. That they will also receive non-refundable option consideration. That the tenant buyer will do all minor maintenance.  That it is still their property until the tenant buyer exercises the option. That there are no Realtor commissions, closing costs, etc.

5. Are they objecting to lease purchasing because they think they are getting a renter? It is YOUR job to explain the difference to them between a renter and a tenant buyer. Renters give a security deposit that owners must pay back, put in a separate account (in most states). Renters don't care about the property, it is just another house, townhouse, condo to them. If something breaks or goes wrong, it's the owners problem not theirs, and they won't pay their rent until the owner fixes it. 

Tenant buyers are giving them non-refundable option money (a  down payment). Tenant buyers are receiving a rent credit each month based on their payment record.  Tenant buyers are responsible for minor maintenance. Tenant buyers want to be able to have their rent credit and option money applied to the purchase price of this home.  They don't want to lose out. They want this home to become theirs. They are going to take care of this property like it was their own. You can tell a seller that many tenant buyers make improvements ( with their permission, of course).

So be sure you explain to the seller the difference between a renter and a tenant buyer.

And remember, there are going to be some sellers who just want to sell their home. Tell them you wish them the best, that you are here for them if it doesn't work out, and go on to the next seller you can help. There are a ton of them out there, you just have to make the calls ( and I don't mean only 10 to 20 calls)!

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