frustrated

[Mel Rosario]

I may have placed 10 offers in the past year and a half on quality rental properties, and lost them all.  Am I doing something wrong?  Any better strategies?  I must have looked at a few hundred to get these, all in southern california.  Most of these properties break even or little monthly cash flow, which is fine with me.  I do my calculations and based on what the current rents are I make an offer.  None really low ball, maybe $25k below asking at most.  Most were close to asking price.  What I have noticed that in the 400-600k range, there seems to be multiple offers.  I have lost to all cash buyers, renters who live at the property, and slightly higher bids or overbids.  I will not go into a bidding war because there is already little margin of cash flow with these properties.  By the way, all of the properties that I placed a bid on were on the market and sold within 2 weeks.

I try to offer close to selling if the house looks and it needs some work, or offer full price if I like it even if it needed tlc.  I put a minimum of 30% down and have a credit score of 750 or greater.  would like to know how to approach these deals without having to put in an all cash offer to get them.  

I also noticed a lot of these prices are based on a proforma data.  How does BP members deal with that

1.Do I offer for full price, go in and if it requires a lot of tlc, do I renegotiate and ask owner to lower price?

2. Do i ask for a lower price with a higher down than 30%?

3.  Do I offer full or whatever price and say "as is"

need help here, not buyer's remorse, but loser's remorse on a quality property that I could have probably got it I went a little further.

[Elizabeth Colegrove]

Maybe your attitude is slightly off. I hate bidding wars but I am still successful. The key is not the "price" but to know the end goal. The wars I have won have not been over price but everything else. I make the deal so sweat they take me over someone else.

*I remove all the "bull" out of the contract.

*I increase the ernst money down to my downpayment requirement.

*I shorten the close time to the quickest my lender can do (15 days)

*I send a personal letter to why they should chose me.

*I give them my best and final offer on the second attempt. 

I also won't lose the deal over 1,500-2k. So I will go up a touch to show that I am working with them.

Good Luck! I totally understand where you are coming from.