Negotiating with seller

[Sam Cain]

I bought a single family home with the intent to develop the property into 4 townhomes. Adjacent to my investment is a small retail shop. This shop is owned by a small business that uses it to house inventory for their wholesale business. (Wooden trinkets to gift shops). This shop is critical to the highest and best development of my property. I would love to purchase it. I have started conversations with the owner and have gotten as far as receiving a counter offer.

Other important information includes the tax assessors value the property $103,000. There looks to be a tax Lein on the property. Retail properties have been hit hard by the covid lock downs and finding a renter for such a small shop would be hard.

She stated she would be interested in hearing an offer as she would like to move her inventory closer to home.

The conversation is as follows.

Original offer:

I hope all is well. I appreciate the opportunity to present an offer for your property. Thank you for your patience as well. That being said I would like to pay $75,000 for the property. In addition to that, I will pay for a professional company to move your inventory to where ever you need it. Please let me know if you have any questions and we can discuss. I look forward to to hearing from you.

They replied in a text and stated they couldn’t pay that amount as they received an appraisal for significantly more.

Their response:

Thank you for the offer. As you know, I can't accept 75,000.

I cannot let go of this property for anything less than 150,000. Forgive me for being blunt, it's just not a situation where I am willing to haggle.

If you are interested, let me know and we can discuss moving forward.

My thoughts:

I, nor does my real estate agent believe this property is worth that much. It’s in an awkward location. There are no comps to prove her valuation. I also don’t know if that appraisal is real. She could be bluffing.

If I can acquire this property it will bring an additional $250k in profit to the deal. So if I pay $150,000 for it then I am looking at $100,000 in profit that I didn’t have before. With or without the purchase of the property we are developing the land. With the purchase we do 4 units with alley access. Without, we are doing 3 units with no alley access. Her property taps into the into sewer and water lines which is come from the alley. I would need to access that in order to develop the three units.

Since she doesn’t want to haggle, what should be my next move?