Читать книгу Foreclosure Investing For Dummies - Ralph R. Roberts - Страница 59

Understandably, when people are in a financial bind, they’re often upset, anxious, and angry. Parents have the daunting task of facing their kids and telling them, “We can no longer afford to live here.” They’re embarrassed about what their neighbors, friends, and family may think. They may be angry at their boss for laying them off or firing them. In many cases, the husband or wife has just found out about the pending foreclosure from their significant other who spent the family into the poorhouse. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many homeowners struggled with the financial fallout from family illness, job loss, business closures, and mandatory shutdowns.

When you show up at the home of a couple or person facing foreclosure, and you tell the homeowners that you want to help them by buying their property, all that fear, frustration, and anger is likely to get unleashed on you. Even if you can manage to avoid direct conflict, you may be recruited into refereeing a domestic dispute or witnessing emotional outpourings that you’re just not used to seeing.

Distressed homeowners are often most upset about something that happened in the past — something they can’t go back in time and fix. One of your first jobs when dealing directly with homeowners is encouraging them to put the past behind them and address the current situation. Shifting focus to the present can reduced the emotional energy significantly.

You can often relieve some of the pain of foreclosure by letting the homeowners know that they’re not alone. Know the foreclosure statistics for your area, share this information with them, and let them know about their options. This information can often defuse a tense situation and remove some of the anger that may be causing a rift in a couple’s relationship. Ask at your county’s Register of Deeds office; sometimes, the office tracks foreclosure numbers for the county and may be able to provide city, county, and state statistics.