Never Go To Mediation Without This

My Approval-Assessment.

Read on. If you don’t already know or haven’t seen one, I’ll tell you what it is.

Take this magical tool with you to your next mediation. This might be the most important and valuable tip I've ever given.

How much time do you (and a few other professionals and clients) spend in mediation talking about the house, who can get it, who can finance it, if they can buy the other one out, exactly how would it be structured, how best to secure money interest, etc.?

You and I both know that I could teach a thousand Owelty courses and, still, no one around that table could give definitive answers to those questions. At least not until a proper loan application has been taken and an Assessment has been presented by me.

Only then does anyone know for sure.

I can turn those two hours of wasted time into 5 minutes. How?

Try this on your next mediation. Tell your client to call me at least 10 days prior to mediation. Preferably earlier – there’s no downside to starting early, early, early. (More work for me – less anxiety on everyone else). Candidly, if I can, I would rather take the call the night before rather than after the fact. But, get them hooked up sooner than later.

Then, at mediation, take my Approval/Assessment (in print form) that basically says 7 things:

1. Client is approved for financing (if there is a net buyout, only you, the client and I know that maximum buyout for which they are qualified – you don’t want to give that away but you do want to know it as a maximum amount)
2. Client’s loan has been processed AND UNDERWRITTEN and approved subject only to final divorce. <this is NOT a mere pre-approval
3. Exactly how to structure the buyout.
4. We can close by date certain or within 5 business days of final divorce.
5. Ex will have his/her buyout monies by [date].
6. We’re waiting on the other side!
7. Boom Shakalaka!

Then, you just resist the temptation to take a victory lap around the conference room or do the happy dance on the table. It just wouldn’t be seemly.

Yes, this works for informal agreements, kitchen-table negotiations, written settlement offers, that meeting you have in the side room before going before the judge, just about any meeting-of-minds in a negotiation.

Here’s the secret, and we’ve been doing it for so long now it’s hard to remember that it’s totally counterintuitive to the entire lending industry. We underwrite what the settlement is going to look like, not what it is at the moment of application.

The hockey great, Wayne Gretzky, was asked the secret of his magical skills. Let me paraphrase just a tad….

“I never go to where the puck is (or has been),” he said, “but where it’s going to be.”

That’s what mortgage people would have to do in order to help divorcing folks. But, for some reason they don’t. It’s almost as if there’s an unwritten rule – don’t help folks until it’s too late.

I started pushing the envelope 17 years ago and tried doing things that everyone else said couldn’t be done. Well, I actually started “pushing the envelope” when I was about 2 years old and my mother had to play piano for my dad’s small Pentecostal church in Staunton, Virginia. No one wanted to baby-sit me during the worship-music part so she threw me in the “play pen” and put it right beside her on the platform. I spent our “worship” time climbing in and out of the play pen and generally distracting the worshippers. I was told that they eventually had to put barbed wire around the top of my play pen but I’m not so sure about that…sounds like a bit of an exaggeration to me even though my friends swear it’s probably true.

Be that as it may, I’m an incurable “envelope-pusher.” I can’t stand to accept things as they are just because that’s the way they are. Sure, it gets me into trouble. But, when it comes to my customers – your clients – it saves them from trouble. [I also have little tolerance for trying stuff – like socialism and collectivism - just because it seems novel to some or because I want to experiment with other people’s lives and livelihoods. Ooops. Did I just get political?

Now, I’ve always told you that I will not market to you in these newsletters; but, rather, I will always give you usable information that will truly help you in your divorce cases. Mostly, I show you how to turn that white paper into green money.

But, honestly, I can help you and your clients so much more if I am just connected with them. This isn’t marketing – this is the reality of settling cases and finalizing divorces wherein clients get what they need and their housing and finances are not a mess.

I don’t know any other way to truly give valuable help to you for your cases. I really must be connected with your clients and/or opposing if I am to make sure the home financing is done properly, effectively, to the highest benefit of the home owner (borrower) and much sooner that anyone else could do it…not to mention IF anyone else could do it.

We can put an end to financial devastation triggered by divorce at the point of housing. There’s really no sense in any of it happening…at least happening because divorced parties were not connected with the right peeps.

As I tell you in the seminars,

…the bad news is that there are hardly any qualified Divorce-Lending Specialists who can work the magic; the good news is that I happen to know a guy.

Write me and let me know how I can help you. I really like hearing from you and enjoy getting answers to your questions.

Noel Cookman

[email protected]