How to make my offer more attractive?

[Juliane Calboli]

Hey everybody. I’m a new investor and I’m about to offer 20% under market value on duplex that’s on market for over 100 days. I assume owners have money problem, so I thought I’d add paying their closing costs + 5k cash immediately after signing. Can you think of anything else that I can put on the negotiation table that would make my very low price offer more attractive to them? The house is old, so I don’t want to wave any inspection contingencies. 

[Mitch Messer]

Hi @Juliane Calboli and welcome to BiggerPockets!

You're assuming price is the primary consideration of this seller. What if it's not?

Rather than throwing a bunch of random concessions at the seller, I instead encourage you to first talk to them to discover their actual situation and then help them resolve it. (You mentioned the property being "on market," but you didn't say it was listed, so I'm assuming here that you can contact the seller directly.)

There could be tons of reasons why this duplex hasn't sold yet, and for each of these reasons there exist dozens of strategies that would address it. But before you prescribe a solution, you first need to listen carefully to understand your seller's pain and motivation.

You can't expect to hit a target that you can't see!