Georgia offer without an agent

[Trey Reese]

I need some procedural guidance on a deal I'm working - -and I need someone with experience in Georgia.  This is my first investment deal for rental property. So far all of my house buying experience is with purchasing a primary residence, with the assistance of a realtor - and the realtor drove the step-by-step items (attorney, closing, title check, working with bank timing, etc).

I've found a SFH that I want to make an offer on, but it is a FSBO. Both the seller and I are not inclined in involve a realtor (and the included commission). My question is more about order of operations... I think I've got it, but I want to make sure I'm not missing any pieces or doing things 'out of order'.

• Viewed house
• Negotiate a price with seller
  • <this is where I am, now - still negotiating>
• Take details of agreement to Real Estate attorney and have him/her draw up a sales contract
  • contingent on clean inspection, qualified financing, lien check, etc
    • I assume I should handle hiting the inspector
• Have seller sign sales contract
  • will probably want their lawyer to review
• Finalize financing based on my down payment and LTV
  • appraisal conducted by bank
• Once financing is finalized, the attorney will set a closing date?

What am I missing?

[Trey Reese]

@Leighann Davis,

I did finalize the deal and close on the house.  To address a few of the points I made in the first post:

• Seller actually had a sales contract ready, so I didn't have to draw up one myself
• The inspection was a little problematic:
  • The financing bank hired the appraiser, and they (inspector) were generally hard to deal with.
    • I've since bought 2 more SFH's finance thru this bank and had similar problems with their appraiser - - so next time, I may try a bigger bank that can bring better tools to deal.
• Seller and I signed the contract at the same time, but due to the appraiser problems, I had to go back to him to offer an extension to the closing date.
• Closing went very smoothly.

The seller was also a landlord/investor/flipper - so he was pretty easy to deal with during all the bumps.

Things I should have done differently:

• I should have spent more time negotiating, so I paid a bit too much for the house, but I was in "first-house fever" and wanted a set of keys pretty badly.
• I should have researched more banks.  I chose the one I did because they were small, and I felt I would get a higher level of service - -- I got that, but it came with a higher level of hand-holding, too.

This is a pretty low-income housing area, so the rent is consistent, but not always timely.  I've turned this house over to a property management company, and the 10% per month, and markup for repairs/calls has been worth my time saved.

Now, I'm looking to start acquiring small apartments, but I'm always looking for a good SFH deal, too.