what do you actually say in the first thirty seconds

I went through this twice. The record is public, meaning anyone could look it up, which is why it's not creepy to have looked it up. Is that the logic?

That's the logic, juniper, but the feeling in the owner's living room doesn't care about the logic. I've been building a list for a few months and the thing that changed my thinking was reading the actual notices. Names, amounts, dates. It's someone's worst month printed on a form.

halyard, one line I've seen recommended and like: "I don't know your situation and I'm not going to guess at it." It hands them control of how much they tell you.

The script matters less than how fast you can answer their second question, which is always some version of "how much and how soon." If you fumble that you sound like a tire kicker, and they've already had four postcards this week.

I've been researching for six months without closing anything, so weigh this accordingly. The pattern in every teardown I've seen is that door knocking converts better than calling on these lists and everyone hates it. Something like a single-digit response rate on mail versus much higher on doors, though the numbers people quote vary wildly and I don't trust any of them.

keystone's point is the one I'd worry about. I couldn't quote a number in thirty seconds right now.

Starting from zero and this thread is the first time the ethics part felt concrete instead of like a slogan. The bit that reframed it for me is the auction is the alternative. If I don't call, the outcome is not "nothing happens to them."

On pike's numbers: don't anchor on any published response rate for these lists, because the denominator is garbage. Skip-traced phone data on distressed owners is stale and the wrong-number rate is high, so a 2 percent response on a mail drop and a 2 percent response on dials mean different things about the underlying list.

The more useful metric is contacts per deal rather than pieces per deal. Track how many owners you actually spoke to. If you're speaking to 30 owners and signing none, the problem is your offer or your payoff math, not your opener. If you're speaking to 3 owners out of 500 addresses, the problem is data and cadence.

Where the door-knocking advantage really comes from is timing. On a recorded notice, every investor working that county pulled the same file the same week, so the owner is saturated on day 5 and unreachable by phone. Showing up is the channel that isn't crowded, which is also why some owners react badly to it. Check your state's rules on in-person solicitation of homeowners in default before you build a business on knocking, since a handful of states have specific foreclosure consultant statutes that get read broadly.

Keystone is right that the second question kills people. Have a number ready that you can defend, and be explicit that it's subject to a written payoff statement from the lender and a title search. Naming a number and then dropping it after you find the second mortgage is how you become the story the owner tells their attorney.

The thing I'd flag, looking at the loan file, is that servicers will often keep talking to the owner about a modification right up to the sale date, and the owner reads that as hope. You're not competing with other investors in that conversation, you're competing with the servicer's letter.

I've been running numbers for months without pulling the trigger, and this thread moved me a step. The metric change rena-expert describes, contacts per deal instead of mail per deal, is measurable with a spreadsheet and no software, which removes my excuse.

Still stuck on tender's point though. If the owner thinks the modification is coming through, my offer looks like giving up. I don't know what you say to that without arguing with someone about their own hope.