In this instructional video, real‑estate coach Chris Prefontaine explains why sellers often resist providing mortgage and financial details and how agents can overcome that resistance by building trust and rapport. He outlines a three‑part phone script: (1) identify yourself as a real‑estate investor, (2) confirm you’re speaking with the decision‑maker, and (3) ask for permission to ask detailed questions. He stresses that obtaining permission reduces push‑back when requesting sensitive data. Prefontaine describes tactics for handling objections—slow down, explain the importance of the information, and defer detailed requests to later stages (the appointment, step 4 of his “7 Steps to a Taking” framework). He clarifies why mortgage balance and payment data are crucial for structuring creative‑financing deals, even if sellers view the data as personal. The video also situates the call within a broader process, noting that the initial call is step 1 and the appointment is step 4, giving multiple opportunities to gather needed information. Finally, he promotes his coaching resources at smartrealestatecoach.com and 3paydaysbooks.com/youtube for further training.
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Have you ever found yourself on a phone call with a seller and you are talking to the seller and you're moving the deal forward? Yet when you go ask for the financial information on the property, like the mortgage, the seller stops you by saying, why do you need that information? Or even better, I'm not going to give you that information. That is personal. Well, for most of us, we have no idea how to pivot when it comes to that particular question or positioning with the seller. See, the mortgage information is extremely important when it comes to structuring a creative financing deal. Yet some sellers just aren't ready to give that information. So I'm going to walk you through why exactly it's important, and I'm going to walk you through how the mortgage information will in which the seller is refusing to give you actually has nothing to do with the actual finance. So when you go and you ask a seller if you can gather that information and you have not built enough trust or rapport, it becomes very challenging because they believe, although that information is public record, they believe that it's personal information. Imagine when you're having a conversation with a seller And all of a sudden you ask them for their driver's license or their Social Security number. Those may be extreme examples, yet nobody would give you that information unless you had a very specific reason for it. So what I encourage you to do before you start asking any type of what's considered personal questions, build some trust, build rapport, but even more importantly, ask for permission. So when you start a conversation with a seller, there's really 3 components. To the script in order to ensure that you're going to be able to get any and all information during the time frame while you're on the call. Number one is when you talk to the seller, you want to identify who you are. When you identify who you are, they understand your authoritative position, meaning I am a real estate investor and I'm interested in buying your property. 2 is you want to go ahead and identify that you're speaking with the right person. You could ask me how many times I've actually spoken with a seller and found out that it wasn't actually the right seller or it wasn't a person in a position of authority, especially when I first started. That happened to me many, many times. Next is we want to get permission from the seller. Hey, Mr. or Mrs. Seller, I'm interested in buying your property. I have some questions. Do you mind if I asked you some in order to determine whether or not this is a good property for me to buy? Because we have set up this call in such a frame, where we've identified our authority, we've made sure we're talking to the right person, and now we are asking for permission. Once you start going through your script, it is very rare that anybody ever stops you in your tracks and asks why you need that type of information because you've already received permission. But now that we've received permission, we're going to walk through this call because now we want to build trust and rapport because people like to do business with people that they know, Like and trust. So if a seller ever pushes back, what I'm encouraging you to do is actually slow down instead of pushing forward. Now, Mr. Seller, you got to give me this information. No, instead is, I understand you may not feel comfortable at this point to give me this information. Let's revisit this once I share with you why this is important. So once we've kind of pulled back, we then could explain further. Well, Mr. or Mrs. Seller, I Need this information because we have a couple of different ways in order for us to purchase your property and to be able to help you get to where you're looking to go. Right. Insert motivation. And financing can be involved. So for us, understanding the exact mortgage balance today and the monthly payment, we have a better understanding of what types of options we have available. Now, if they further push, you could say, look, I totally get it. The exact payments may not be necessary just for today, but you have a rough idea of what the balance is in the mortgage payment. And typically when we start to go with a rough idea, then they start to say, okay, I'm interested, I'm going to give you some examples. And then after you receive that information, now you can put yourself in a position where you can overview or share with them the greater vision of what this may look like. And if for some reason they're unable— you're unable to get them to a point where they still won't give you the information, what I would encourage you to do is just to step back further and say, look, we can just revisit this once we're further down the line. And where I would encourage you to revisit that is the appointment. So within our 7 Steps to a Taking framework, the call in which we're talking about right now is step number 1. And the appointment is step number 4. So you will have plenty of opportunities before you go make an offer to be able to identify the information. So don't stress about receiving the information all up front. This is building rapport. This is developing a relationship. And real estate investing is about solving people's problems. If it was as simple as just walking down the street and only dealing with the actual structure of a real estate foundation, a real estate home, right, or a commercial building, creative financing real estate would be a much simpler thing. But instead, we're working with people and we have emotions that are involved. And really building trust and rapport is a huge component of that. Not sure where to get started? Go to smartrealestatecoach.com/ Get going for free books, strategy calls, and a whole bunch more. We're going to help you get going the wicked smart way. We've been after this for over a decade doing exactly that. So what I encourage you to do is go to 3paydaysbooks.com/youtube because we have our complete blueprint and it walks you through exactly how we are buying these deals once we have any and all of the information and the types of profits that we're creating using Our creative financing strategies. Get 3 Paydays at books.com/youtube.
