For a judgment enforcer, or anyone else who is exposed to judgment leads in their hobby or line of work, selling judgment leads can bring current and future income.
All judgment enforcers eventually learn its best to enforce judgments local to them. Most turn down judgments not local to them unless the judgment amount is big and the debtor has a lot of assets showing.
More and more judgment enforcers are learning to refer judgment leads instead of turning them down. When someone calls about a small claims judgment in another state, the experienced judgment enforcer thinks, “how can I help this person – even though I won’t be enforcing the judgment?”.
The answer is to refer the judgment to a judgment broker who can both help the judgment owner and pay the judgment enforcer for their lead.
Someone learning the judgment recovery business can make money referring judgment leads until they find an ideal judgment for them to enforce – simple ones where the debtor’s assets are in the same city as the judgment enforcer.
Of course nobody knows what a judgment is worth until it is enforced. For that reason, the best way to sell judgment leads is on a future-pay basis. A Judgment broker usually pays 5% of the profit of enforcing the judgment.
Selling raw leads is not very profitable. This is because the debtors might have filed for bankruptcy, or either the debtor or creditor might not be found. Also, the judgment owner might not be interested in getting their judgment enforced, which does not makes sense to most people.
There are three qualities of “best judgment leads”:
A) The best judgment leads are those where a creditor contacted a judgment enforcer or where you have contacted the creditor and confirmed that they want their judgment enforced.
B) The best judgment leads are those where the debtors have been screened to make sure they have assets such as jobs, property, income sources, or bank accounts – and have not filed for bankruptcy.
C) The best judgment leads are for judgments more than two years old, and that are at least two years away from their expiration date.
Judgments less than two years old may have creditors that have not smelled the coffee yet. Some think magical thinking will get their judgments paid – or that the debtor who has lied to them before the judgment will soon tell the truth after the judgment and pay them.
The predicted quality of a judgment lead is based on the factors above. Like selling a judgment for cash up front, selling judgment leads for cash upfront is done at a steep discount.
The cash paid for selling a lead upfront ranges from 25 cents to $20. This depends on the quality of the lead and the judgment market. A broker pays a percentage of the future enforced total. They typically pay 5% of the profit from enforcement, which is almost always more than $20.
The enemy of being paid for judgment leads is when the creditor is not facing the realities of judgment recovery. When the creditor is not realistic, their judgments will never be enforced, so they lead will be worthless.
For the best return on judgment leads, contact the creditors and make sure they know judgments are not cash, not guaranteed, and usually difficult and expensive to recover.