Items to Bring to BPO Appointment

Wondering what to bring to your BPO appointment? Me too, but I just had one today that I thought went very well so I thought I'd share.

First, some background info...
BPO's are now often ordered the day the lender receives the short sale package, before a loss mitigator is even assigned to your account. They do this to streamline things for the the loss mitigator so he/she is all set to go once they get assigned. Once a BPO agent is called, they try and make an appointment within 24 hours. As my BPO agent put it, you get the call at 1pm and then at 3pm you get an email asking if it has been completed yet.

My Story...
The BPO agent assigned to my case was a really nice guy who called me yesterday trying to schedule an appointment for today. I followed SREC's coaching and agreed to the appointment but made it seem like I was doing him a favor. I told him the owner usually needs much more notice but I'll see what I can do. I waited 10 minutes, called the guy back and told him I convinced the owner to let him in the house. The guy was grateful. For all those keeping score at home, that's Jordan +1.

The appointment was to take place at 3:30pm today, however, the BPO agent called me a few minutes early and told me he would be late because of traffic. Again, I made it seem like I was doing him a favor by saying I had to cancel an appointment, but I would stay and wait for him because it was important the BPO get done (of course, I didn't really have an appointment to cancel). He showed up around 4pm, apologized for being late, and thanked me for canceling my appointment so he could get in the house "for 10 minutes, just to take pictures of every room". Score that Jordan +2.

Again, using SREC's suggestions, I started to plant the seed while standing on the driveway before we even went into the house. I said "Did the lender tell you the situation with the homeowner who owns this house?" He replied, "No". I said, "The house is in preforeclosure, it's a really sad and unfortunate situation." I then went on to dramatically tell him the sad story of the homeowner, "business failed, divorce, husband took all the $ leaving a single mom with 3 kids to raise". He started to empathize for the homeowner. Score Jordan +3.

I then gave him a manilla folder with a bunch of documents designed to make his life easy. My basic comments were that the lenders already have all this information but I thought I'd pull it together for you so you know what they're looking at. He was pleasantly surprised, thanked me, and put it in his car so he wouldn't forget it. Score that Jordan +4.

The contents of this folder were the following:

1) MLS listing of subject property
2) CMA with low comps
3) Independent BPO I had already done on the property
4) Property Summary Report
- This is a report I put together after getting some ideas from some of the paperwork the IRS requires to get a property discharged from an IRS lien. It's basically a letter intended to give a quick and accurate account of the current conditions of the subject property and the circumstances regarding its present owner. I addressed it to the lenders and wrote it in a very independent, objective voice.....kind of like, here are the facts. It covers a lot of ground and basically does all the hard work for me (unfortunate situation with homeowner, property not selling, finally an offer on the property, property needs major repairs, etc.)
5) Repair estimates (generated with HammerPoint)
6) Hardship letter
7) Map of the REOs and preforeclosures in the immediate area (generated by RealQuest)
8) Map of the registered sex offenders in the immediate area (info from megan's law)
- If you've never looked before, you'd be surprised how many registered sex offenders are in every community. I made a map with a house icon for the subject property and sprinkled icons that looked like men at their reported addressed. When I showed the BPO agent this map, I just said that my company is asked to put together all kinds of things like this for lenders because consumers do their research and know everything about a house. He wasn't surprised.

Anyway, I then left him alone to take pictures stopping him only occasionally to take note of some important repair areas the homeowner had told me about (I don't want him to miss these areas). Other than that, I just tried to make conversation about anything other than the house so it wouldn't seem like I had any real interest in what he was doing. When he was finished, I tried to close our conversation by redirecting his focus back on the homeowner's situation and away from the house (per SREC coaching) by saying: "The seller is really in distress and will appreciate the time and effort you put into this evaluation". He left satisfied and said he'd turn it around in 24-48 hours.

I don't know about you, but I thought it went almost TOO well. Jordan +4, BPO agent happy and satisfied. Well have to wait and see. I plan on emailing him a thank you note tomorrow and calling him on Tuesday to try and find out the BPO number he came up with. If he doesn't give it to me, I may ask him to come out and do another BPO on the property for me :-). We'll see, that's pretty balzy.

Anyway, that's my story. Hope you all got something from it and wish me luck. I'd love to hear your thoughts/ideas on this approach and some of your stories.