How not to call about a foreclosure

A couple of months ago, Jay wrote about (among other things) Peter's house and the trustee's sale. (And why you shouldn't borrow money from people who write to you out of the blue to offer help with a foreclosure.) I thought that was all settled, but just now I got a phone call. At 9:00 on a Friday night. From a woman who sounded totally stoned, with a kind of slow and spacey way of talking. It went like this:

Me: Hello, this is Jed.

Her: Hello. . . . I'm calling . . . from Washington? I hope I'm not disturbing you?

Me: Um. . . .

Her: My name is Martha . . . and I'm calling . . . about a house that's in foreclosure.

Me [realizing what this is about]: Sorry, I don't have anything to do with that.

Her: Oh. . . . But you do . . . realize . . . that it's in foreclosure, right?

Me: Yes, everything is going as it's supposed to, and I don't have anything to do with it.

Her: Oh. Sorry to bother you.

So I figured, as a public service, I would list three things not to do if you decide to engage in a real estate loan scam:

  • Take drugs before calling your intended client.
  • Call at 9 p.m. on a Friday.
  • Start the conversation by identifying the state you're calling from, providing no other information.

3 Responses to “How not to call about a foreclosure”

  1. Bob Gatchel

    Jed,

    After I stopped laughing at the exchange you posted, I also shook my head sadly agreeing with you! ! As a long time investor, Realtor and real estate consultant, I could tell you hair raising stories about the whole “foreclosure scam” issues. In fact, it’s SO bad here in my state of Maryland that they enacted new laws about ANYONE talking to a homeowner in default / foreclosure process! Amazing what some people will do or TRY to do!

  2. Jed

    Hmm. I’m never sure what to do about this kind of comment. On the one hand, the commenter has clearly read my entry and taken the time to write a real comment, so it’s not comment spam in the usual sense. On the other hand, presumably the primary reason for his posting was to post a link to his own website on the topic, in order to boost that site’s PageRank. (And thereby make money, because his site has ads on it.) On yet another hand, though, his site appears to contain some useful information, and doesn’t appear (from the very brief glance I took at it) to actually be a foreclosure scam itself, and I have no objection to people posting comments in my journal that link to useful or interesting sites.

    So I guess I’ll leave that comment up for now. But if any of y’all do look at that site, feel free to post comments here about whether you think it’s a useful site or not; if it gets enough negative feedback, I’ll remove the link to it.

  3. Bob Gatchel

    Jed, I appreciate you taking the time to comment about my comment . As someone who also has a handful of other real estate oriented sites for my business (as a licensed Realtor in Maryland and long time real estate investing consultant), I know WHY you may take a scant eye at any comment these days, including mine! I mean, there are bots, programs, systems, “scamware” that does nothing but proliforate “comment spam”. I a few other niche blogs myself for different aspects of my business and I have had to deal with so much comment spam that I shut most of them down. You can rest assured that my comment was indeed a “kudos” to you regarding your “how to not call about foreclosure” … it was genuniely funny. My partner and I have been doing foreclosure investing the RIGHT way the LEGITIMATE way as part of our business for some time and we ourselves are quite angered at the way that SOME unscrupulous investors STEAL houses from these unfortunate folks in foreclosure. And my info site that you mentioned was jsut a start to help educate people so that the ‘bad guys’ of this business get OUT of this side of the business. Again, I appreciate your reasons for commenting on the comment. But again, I’m a real guy, with a real comment! All the best to you and keep up the great work! PS – if anyone has ANY other input regarding the site as to things to add / take away or change to help make the site better, I will be GLAD to take any and all input from everyone! PSS – yes my site does have adsense on it due to the fact that I do like the site to try to pay for itself (like the hosting and domain fees), believe you me it is not some barn burning revenue producer HAHAHA.

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