In this live coaching session, Chris Prefontaine leads a group of real‑estate professionals through practical tactics for seller conversations. The discussion begins with the realtor script, emphasizing that every word matters and that phrasing like “how long are you tied up with your realtor?” can confuse sellers; Chris suggests clarifying contract lengths (e.g., 90‑day vs. 6‑month agreements) and planting the seed that sellers may be locked into unfavorable terms. The group then tackles the common objection when a seller plans to list with a friend or family realtor, developing a blunt fee‑avoidance script (“Would you rather not pay fees?”) and reinforcing the risk of fractured closings. A substantial portion of the call focuses on managing virtual assistants (VAs). Chris stresses that VAs must follow the exact realtor script, be monitored for dial volume and efficiency (dials per hour, nightly reports), and be given structured training periods. Participants share experiences adjusting VA hours when onboarding new workflows (e.g., REI Black Book). The latter half shifts to creative financing, specifically owner‑financing deal structuring. Chris walks through a real‑world example: a $400k property, calculating monthly payments, creating a spread, and deciding when to reveal financing numbers to the seller. The conversation covers interest vs. principal‑only periods, amortization strategies (e.g., 18‑month principal‑only then 30‑year amortization), and the importance of ensuring sufficient markup and cash‑flow “payday” milestones. Participants discuss using reliable comps (alternative databases vs. Zillow/PropStream) and the need to present realistic rent ranges. Finally, the team explores partnership dynamics with brokers and law firms, the scarcity of agents skilled in advanced financing, and the necessity of keeping creative‑finance activities separate from a law‑firm’s core influence to maintain credibility. Throughout, Chris encourages a conversational, friend‑like tone, role‑playing, and continuous feedback from coaches.
Chapters
If they're not selling, it's because of the interest rates. And if they're asking you for an interest rate, they're back to where they started. All of the words in the Realtor script, all of them mean something. So if you leave off like the last little quarter, you're leaving off some keywords. How long you tied up for? Jessica, you did a really good job of this recently. How long you tied up for? If it doesn't— if you don't get full price in the time you want or you cancel sooner, Call me. Well, we should talk, or how are you in that? That's the realtor script. And then if you plant that seed and then you plant the 17 to 20%, they're looking at their realtor a little differently. Unless you're, you're again the one talking to the realtor like they were able to yesterday. Questions on either end of that realtor thing, either referrals or how you talk to a seller about realtor? Any confusion there at all? Avi?
Yeah, uh, question is the— when I use that, uh, asking people how long they're tied up for, um, I get a lot of confusion. Can we use another— is there a better terminology?
Um, before I give you the answer, I think I know where I want to go, but, uh, give me an example because I think I know where I want to go and it makes it even better. Go ahead.
Okay, so I say, so how long are you tied up with your realtor for? They say, I, I, I— they like, they're sometimes they're just like, they don't, no idea what I'm saying to them.
Okay, so this was me and you were the seller. I'd say, oh, sorry, here's what I mean. Some realtors will sign a contract with you for 90 days, which is more than ample because the market will tell you by then if you're priced right. But unfortunately, some tie you up for 6 months or a year. I hope you weren't stuck on something like that. And guess what? Most of them are, and they go, oh shit. So you planted another seed that they shouldn't have done that.
Okay.
So I'd stay with it for that reason because I haven't got a lot of that, but I like it. I invite you to go deeper and like throw a little more salt in there, just sprinkle it.
Okay, perfect.
Um, Robert.
So when, uh, a seller says that they're listing with a brand that's a realtor. How do you counteract that?
They're going to list or they are right now?
I've heard it several times that they're going to list with a friend that's a realtor. Wait a minute.
Okay, that's a different script. So I want the coaches to chime in. If they didn't list yet, the script is real simple. Would you rather not pay fees? I don't care who it is, if it's their mother.
Okay.
Why? I mean, if someone cared about them and they were a friend and they could not pay a fee and sell and get more, why wouldn't they say do it if they're a friend, right?
Um, and get full price.
Yeah. So if they're not listed yet, that's the different script. Rusty, Mike, Rick, anything that you want to add? I should breathe here a little bit, let you guys chime in.
No, I think that's exactly it. Regardless, there's going to be some type of compensation for the time unless, I mean, they agreed to zero. Uh, so I would throw that out there, make that apparent, make them cognizant of that. So even if they do go go forward with it, uh, they'll have that in the back of their mind and know that you're that option where they can still get the most for their property.
Yeah, I just ask him, hey, is he doing it for free or is he like—
I love that.
Yeah, like, just be blunt with them. Is he doing it for free?
Oh, it's a friend, so there's no charge?
So no charge question.
There's no way, by the way, unless they own their own brokerage and they just want to be nice, because most of them, oh, they're broke or something, right? So I love that, Russ, even better because that's like assumptively like, what does that matter? You're still paying a fee.
I also throw out there the fractured closings and that quite a few sellers that we've talked to recently have gone through one or multiple failures in the closings. So they've taken it off the market for months only to start over at square one.
I do like that a lot.
Yes.
You guys can do this very conversationally. Again, act like it's your friend, right? I think I did this in one of the calls. I don't know if you're catching the calls I'm putting on ScriptGenome. I'm putting on more because I'm doing a lot more. But I just say, like, if it was Rusty, I could say the same thing and just be really nonchalant and casual and conversational about it. Like, you could add Rick's stat there. All right, just so you know, like, if they're dead set on listing, okay, just so you know, let me just give you some stats. And if it ever comes up where you need me, let me know. So you're just helping them. And you tell them what's going on. The Wall Street Journal said this and fraction closing. They understand that because they're hearing the media scream. They just never heard the stats. So you're not trying to sell them. You're trying to say, okay, I get it, but let me just share some stats with you and then let me know if anything changes. That's all. Adam, question? I typed something in the chat when I— the last thing that I'm trying to say when somebody says I'm going to sell it or list it with a realtor, I've tried to put in my brain, it's on my board when it doesn't sell.
Give me a call.
I love Matthew's. I, I'd be hard-pressed to say no there. Uh, is money important to you? And be quiet.
I love it.
Uh, Judy.
Um, you just, you brought up a good point that I've seen a lot of leads come from my VA that, um, they're listing with a realtor or it's listed and I don't really know what she's doing with that. So I think that that is worthy of a conversation, or at least warrants a conversation with her to see like what is she doing around the realtor script. So I don't know if anybody else, if their VAs, especially the ones from David, are doing anything around that.
Uh, we have MJ. She's in week— I think she's in week 4 right now. She's doing awesome. And for the first week or 2, because I haven't worked with her personally even though I knew she's well trained, When she posted her nightly numbers on Slack to me and Nick and Sue, which she has to, there's realtors in it every week. Every week there's realtors. Sorry, every night. She posts every night. I made sure she was using the realtor script, the exact script I just gave you guys. And then Sue sends the realtor letter every time.
Okay, great. Thank you.
She doesn't have to go deeper, just throughout the script. And you can role play it with her or let her send you one recording of that. That's all.
Yep.
And you guys, let's talk about that for one quick sec. If you have, uh, VAs, please manage their dials. Rusty, I asked Rusty this morning when he reports his nightlies to me, how long did it take you to do those dials so that I can go to my, uh, so I can go to MJ who's not on Mojo yet, who's going to be, and say, look, this is where you should be. If you're on Mojo, you'd be crushing it, and here's the numbers. That's why I kept asking you, Rusty. So I get the, I get it from the horse's mouth. I know you're hammering it. So know your numbers and know what your VA should be hitting for dials per hour. And then once you know that, then we work on getting them more efficient per the 2 hours they work or whatever, right? They can get more efficient. Uh, yesterday we did Avi's numbers in, uh, in the office visit. If we can get Avi doing the exact same thing he's doing now and just getting an extra appointment or 2 on the same amount of dials, That's, that's where we found a hole, right, Avi? That's, that's being more efficient at the same time.
Yep, exactly. That was the hole.
Chris, I had to increase my VA's hours, um, when she's learning the new REI Black Book workflow. Her hours went from like 10 to 15 because apparently it's more cumbersome. I don't know if you found that, Rick.
It is a little bit more cumbersome, but it's not tremendously so.
It's not 5 hours a week.
No. Okay.
Yeah, maybe it's just for her to learn it though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
My VA's, um, actually, Mitch, she took probably a week to go through and make sure she understood the workflows and how everything worked, which is, is fine with me. It just makes her more efficient.
And then you let her go back to normal hours, Rick?
What'd you do?
Give her a buffer to learn?
No. I just let them do pretty much what they need to do to learn it. It wasn't a tremendous amount of time, but she gets it down now. So no problem.
Okay.
Got it. Okay. Paul, in addition to closing out windows, you probably wanna close your door too because someone's interrupting you. Go ahead.
I need to lock it.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Um, so I've talked to 2 brokers. I'm glad we're talking about realtors. I've talked to 2 brokers, uh, about me doing creative finance. And, uh, they both said, oh yeah, well, we do that also. We do lease purchases and owner financing and, uh, you know, sub-2s. And, um, so I guess I kind of backed off, uh, because I didn't want to step on their toes. Um, and, you know, we, we actually refer business back and forth. I'll refer a house, you know, to them. They refer legal work and stuff. But, um, are Are we going after less experienced agents who just don't know how to do that more advanced stuff?
This is interesting. I want to ask Avi in New Jersey what his experience is, but in all my years, in all my years, I haven't run into more than a handful of people who know how to do that. So even the experienced ones, Paul, including when I was cranking out 100 homes a year, I didn't know all the nuances. So Avi, do you have a bunch of agents that know all of that? That's a lot.
They know, they know nothing about this.
Yeah.
Okay.
He has— Avi's office does how many transactions? I learned yesterday, 80?
40 to 50 a year.
40 to 50.
They do—
it's not like they don't— they do a lot of deals. So that's not the norm, Paul. They're good, they're good source for you, for your law firm then, really.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll leave it.
Okay.
Yeah.
And when they can't close, when they can't close their creative deals, tell them to bring it to you.
Yeah, yeah, it's not out of the question that did come with something, but yeah, that's good.
Yeah, I, I just feel like I kind of have to keep it a little bit on the down low because I, I don't know, I, I get people talking to me about, oh yeah, some lawyer screwed up my case because he also dabbles in real estate investing. And that's kind of— that's actually a thing that people talk about, like, uh, you know, maybe I don't want to be one of those guys.
So I could see why you'd tread the line there with With respect to your existing center of influence via law firm, I'd keep it separate.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'd keep it separate.
Okay, maybe have separate.
Yep.
Okay, all right, fair enough.
When you call sellers, I think it's great when I hear you on your phone say, I'm an attorney locally.
Credibility. Yeah, it really helps, yeah.
Yeah, okay. All right, keep throwing questions out. I'll look what else we have here. There's last week a lot of questions on structuring payments for owner financing. So would it behoove us to talk about that a little bit?
Yes, I think it would.
Trying to see the, the heads bobbing. Okay, again, best if I talk about a real deal. So about, I don't know, hour and a half ago, 2 hours ago, I posted a call on the script channel. Way too long for my liking, was 8 minutes, but, um, it was a free and clear, uh, Vietnam vet slash builder who's kind of just tinkering. And I— you can hear the call later. I— it literally is brand new. But what I did when I hung up, just so you know, because this answers the question, um, let me tell you what the numbers are. He wants $400,000. You'll hear me in the call say something along the lines of— believe it or not, he didn't know what owner financing was, or he didn't— what I said. So I said we'd make monthly payments against your $400,000. I said, I haven't seen the house yet, but in theory. He said, all right, well, send me an email. Well, he actually said, tell me what that looks like. You can come out. I said, I'd rather email it to you first. If you think it's even remotely possible, then we'll come out. So then I went and did what answers the question. Mike and I were talking about this last week. If you watch the video I did in ARK years ago, it still holds true. It tells you to look in theory what a buyer will have to go get a mortgage for, for that house. So you have that number, and when rates are low, it behooves you to talk about that number with the seller. But when rates are high, that's not going to help you, right? You want to know for your sake, but it's not going to help you because the rate's going to be high monthly. Are you guys tracking with me? Okay. So what I did instead was I said, Sue, we're testing a new database out instead of PropStream, Zach and I and Nick and Sue. Seems super, super good and the best, best quality data. So we'll let you guys know if we're going to roll that out. I think we're close to it. But anyway, I said go on there and get me some comps because Zillow you can't trust. They said $4,000 for comps for rent. I'm like, this is too high. So she went and ran the comps and got me somewhere between $2,700 and $3,200. There were higher ones, but for comparables. So then I used that because I know that's what I'm dealing with in reality. But then did I also look at what a rate, what a mortgage costs?
Yeah, you still go look at it.
You just don't Use it with the seller to negotiate because it's against you. Then I said, then I sent him an email and I said, I think I gave him a four-year option for made up some number of fifteen hundred and seventy one dollars and a sixty-month option of sixteen and change. Knowing that I was super low and I can get up as high as maybe two grand, I want to see how he reacts because I'm just on email right now. I'm just on like this preliminary stages. Depending on how he reacts, I told him I'd come out and see him, knowing full well it's going to take a day because he doesn't stop talking. But I want to make sure that he, at least in theory, the numbers are okay. And that's all I did. For those of you guys last week, I had 3 of you ask about owner financing and how do you figure out that number. You got to create a spread for yourself. Now, is there anything wrong with you saying to a seller, if you have to, if they don't like your number, hey, look, We deal with buyers anytime. In the meantime, they're going to pay me a lease, so I got to make a spread here. There's nothing wrong with you talking openly like that. Do they say, I only get this much rent? Okay. You got to pay taxes. You have the risk of eviction. You have the risk of repairs. You have none of that here.
I do.
So I got to create a spread here. And it's just logical. Again, you're having conversations. Does this make sense? And does this help on the owner financing calculations? Because that was today too. It's like a current deal I'm working on. Nothing on that, you guys? No questions? Coaches, anything to add?
Yeah, I think one, one thing that may be confusing is figuring out the interest, if there's interest involved.
Okay, tell me if I answer it, Rick, what you're saying, what you're alluding to. When is it— when they say they want interest, There's a number of ways to go here, guys. Remember how I bought the building? I said, ooh, we really don't do that, but what I can do is, and I said, we'll pay principal only for 18 months, then we'll take the balance and amortize it at 5.2%. So what did that look like? Whatever the balance was at the end of 18 months, we stuck in the mortgage calculator, 30-year amortization, but a balloon wherever you guys decide, but still a 30-year amortization. Is that what you mean as far as calculating, Rick?
Yeah, well, I think when you're amortizing, like if you were to just do, uh, interest and principal and interest from the get-go, uh, your principal paydown is going to be very low. And if they cash out within 2 years, you're not going to have a whole lot.
Yeah, it's very low. I have never paid a seller interest except for after that 18 months on a building because I wanted the building, but I've never done it on a house. I'm not saying you can't. I'm saying I never have.
Yep.
So it's best to build in a year, 18 months worth of principal first.
Whatever you can get, because you're not getting much, if anything. Even if you got 6 months, you're way ahead of starting amortization early. And with most sellers, if they got their price, everything else being equal, kind of live with 6 months.
Sure.
Or even 12 months, right? This guy for the building was very savvy. He's the largest landowner in the area. He got real estate. And he was like, okay, that's fair. Um, Rick, did that— is that kind of what you're alluding to? Is that good?
That's exactly what I was, because that, that was my main concern was, you know, if you're looking at the principal paydown from the get-go, you're not going to get much.
No, it's awful. You got to rely on payday 1 and 3. Yeah, well, 2 spread, not— and then pot of 3 will go away because you don't have the principal.
Yep.
You're gonna make sure you get enough markup. enough spread, those 2 work and you like the deal. It's just every deal you got to look at the whole thing. And coaches, it goes without saying, just scream if you got something bad.
No, again, that's if their interest rate is, you know, prime plus 1 or, you know, because you can say, okay, I can get you your number, but I need to do this first. Right. And then I can get you to your number knowing that the first year principal paydown will, you know, eat away at that principal. You know, and then I can get you to your number. But like you said, make sure that payday 2 is there as well.
Yeah.
And you know what, guys? Most of the interest rates nowadays does not make a deal work. And that's why flippers and, and, and some other people in different niches are panicking right now and coming to what we're doing because the rates are just too high, like for multis and these things that are being bought conventional. That's why they're drying up and that's why sellers need you. Keep that in mind. If they're not selling, it's because of the interest rates. And if they're asking you for an interest rate, they're back to where they started.
