Forty NODs a month from the county recorder and not one converted, where does the contact step actually break

Question

Here is a scenario worth working through honestly, because the numbers are common. Picture someone pulling Notice of Default filings from the county recorder every month for about eight months, in a county like Skagit County, Washington. Forty or so per month on average, sometimes fewer. Not a single one converts into a closed deal or a fee. That should be said plainly before anything else. The filings are public with the address right there, and the owner's name usually turns up on the assessor site in about four minutes. That part is not hard. The contact step is where it breaks. Say twelve letters go out over a three-month stretch, handwritten rather than printed. Two responses, both asking for the contact to stop. One door knock in February, and the owner is polite but has already listed with an agent the week before. So there is a clean list every month and no results. The question is whether the problem is timing, which is probably yes, or whether NOD-stage owners in that area are already getting buried in mail from every other person who pulls the same public record. Probably both. This is the kind of side experiment a passive investor runs, maybe sixty hours over eight months and $140 in postage, with nothing to show for it. What does the contact method actually look like for someone who has closed off a distressed-owner lead?

gio_marchetti5 · Answer

What week of the default period are you hitting them with the letter?

meilinzhou · Answer

The letter thing probably isn't the medium problem, it's the message problem. In 2021 I was mailing NOD lists in Snohomish County and I had the same dead silence until I stopped writing anything that sounded like I wanted something from them. The letters that got responses were the ones where I led with a specific number, not an offer, just a number. Something like "based on the assessor records your place is around 1,400 square feet on a 6,200 square foot lot, I can close without financing in 18 days if the situation calls for it." That specificity changed the response rate meaningfully. Not dramatically, but from nothing to occasional.

The one that cost me was a Marysville owner I reached by phone after tracking down a number through a skip trace service I was paying $49 a month for. She called back, we talked twice, I got excited and told my capital partner we probably had something. She went with a local agent who listed it short, it sold for $312,000, and I had mentally penciled in a $4,200 finder fee. Zero. What I should have learned and didn't apply fast enough is that NOD-stage in a county like Skagit or Snohomish means the window is maybe three to four weeks before someone else has already talked to them four times. Sixty hours over eight months is not a pace problem. It's that the response needs to happen within days of the filing, not weeks.

okonkwo_pm · Answer

Skagit gets saturated fast because the list is small enough that every wholesaler in a 60-mile radius is working the same 40 names. Are you skip-tracing to a cell and calling within 24 hours of the filing date, or are you still running on a mailing cycle?

marcus_odell · Answer

Sixty hours and $140 is not embarrassing for an experiment, and the door knock in February is the only thing on that list that had a real shot. Phone is the gap. The usual arc on pre-foreclosure leads in that part of Washington is mail first, the same silence you are describing, then skip tracing and calling directly, at which point a first live conversation turning into a $4,200 assignment fee inside three weeks is an ordinary outcome. Mail rarely moves anyone at that stage, because they are numb to it by week two of the NOD. Forty a month in Skagit is a small enough list that every one of them could realistically be called inside a weekend if you had numbers, which changes the math on this completely.

nicole_adeyemi · Answer

Twelve letters over three months is the whole problem. The operators who convert NOD lists reach leads inside days 18 to 35 from filing, and even that window requires three touches rather than one letter and a wait. The two who told you to stop probably got your letter on day 60, when they had already made a decision. One door knock in eight months does not qualify as a sample size. It is avoidance with extra steps.

malik_thornebury · Answer

What is your skip-trace method, and are you getting a cell number or just a mailing address?

omar_haddad · Answer

Phone beats mail by a margin that will feel embarrassing once you try it.

natehalloran · Answer

Cold contact at NOD stage in a 40-file county means you're the fifteenth letter they opened that week.

Forty NODs a month from the county recorder and not one converted, where does the contact step actually break

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