Realtors laughed at me....

[Ken T.]

Have you ever have a realtor laugh at you and tell you to get in line when you say you want to buy a distressed property in cash? This happened to me and I'm beginning to wonder how saturated the market is with money.

My soon to be wife and I were considering moving out of NYC to Miami for a few reasons; her family is in miami and money goes alot further there.  I currently Flip and Wholesale in CT and although I find the challenges here to be fun and exciting I see how much money I pay to hard money lenders and how easy it is to stumble across high risk homes that are over a hundred years old.  

So Miami might be the answer, the homes are newer and cheaper and the weather is great! (haha)  I have the cash and knowhow to flip what surprised me is how rude the realtors in Miami were to me when i ask for them to send me any foreclosures or homes in need of tlc.  I was fortunate enough to have friends in the tristate bring me into this field and now I'm wondering how to break into a new "booming" market, apparently real cash doesn't speak volumes like it did 4 years ago.

[Robert G.]

Miami is great for wholesalers, but I think the margins are a bit thin for flipping right now. There is so much competition that getting a deal with enough meat on the bones is difficult. Distressed sellers don't "need" investors to come solve their problems. They can simply list the property, either with an agent or FSBO, at 10-15% below FMV and they'll have plenty of offers within 2-3 days.

I think the real issue is all the foreign investors looking to park capital here.  They don't care about the cap rate, they are fine with break-even situations, they just want to relocate their funds into the safety of the US market.  They'll outbid local flippers 99% of the time.

So, to answer your question, the realtors have little incentive to work with flippers like us.  They can make a few phone calls and get better offers (even all cash) within a few hours.