Some REO sellers advice

[Jorvon Smith]

I want to know if there is any way of going around a earnest money deposit once you have the POF to submit an offer.
I have about four properties that I would like to sell in So. Cal (Southren California) all under 100k and I have been asked by a realtor to obtain a chasier check (for each prop) along with the POF. Is this necessary?

An expidited response would surely be apprieciated...

Many Thanks and GOD BLESS
Jorvon

Many Thanks

[J Scott]

Originally posted by Justin S.:

What other terms are you using? No inspection, quick closing, etc?

I try to have as few contingencies as possible...

- I never have a financing contingency. I make cash offers, and while I'll often change to financing prior to the closing, if for some reason I can't get financing (or don't have time to get the loan before the closing), I'll pay cash.

- I generally don't have an inspection contingency. Worst case, if there is something major I'm concerned about (structural issue, water-proofing issue, survey concerns, etc), I'll ask for 3 days max for inspections.

- I like to make large earnest money deposits...this gets the asset manager's attention. In fact, if I'm buying a property for less than $40-50K, I'll often offer the entire purchase price in earnest money. At a minimum, I'll offer $5K, and if the bank starts negotiating, I'll often use the EM amount in my negotiations (instead of raising my offer price, I'll raise my EM amount by $10-15K).

- We will generally offer to close in 2 - 3 weeks. Because these are REOs, it generally takes the banks longer to get clear title (often 3 - 5 weeks), but I assume the banks like to see that we're ready to close quickly, if possible.

- My wife is an agent, so we'll often give the listing agent a bonus for "helping us out." Generally it's $500, but if the agent went over-and-above (for example, we've had agents tell us the amount of the highest offer so we knew how much we should offer), we've been known to give our entire side of the commission to the other agent.

- These days, a lot of agents will tell us that they're planning to do some minor work on the property before it sells (clean out trash, fix a leak, etc). We'll always tell the agents that we don't expect any work to be done, so they can save whatever money they were expecting to spend.