Making OFFERS before you see the property

[Brandon Hayes]

Hello everyone hope you all are having a great day. I'm a little confused about analyzing deals and making offers on properties before I even look at them. As I was watching the webinar last night with @Brandon Turner. He mentioned this as a way of making more offers and doing more deals without wasting time. I guess I want to know what are the pros and cons on doing this? I know that it will save your realtor a lot of time. Also thanks to technology most of the time the property has pictures up to view which allows you to usually estimate roughly . Other than that why is it a good idea?

[G.A. Miller]

I'll play devil's advocate. I have not heard the webinar yet, but am signed up to sit in tomorrow (Why did the Pro members get stuck hearing this later on?)

I wholesale in Atlanta and my experiences may possibly be unique to me or our market. However, most of the deals that come across my desk are those that have been contracted by people who haven't walked the property before offering. It's likely one of the largest reasons there are such thin deals being shopped around. Keyboard warriors are good with numbers in volume, but in my experience, lousy with making the deal work because they have no clue what the actual condition of the house is in. You think realtors aren't trying to make their roughs look as much like diamonds as possible in pictures??

I walk every. single. house. that I offer on. 1- it gets me in the field where the guys behind the laptop won't make it which gives me access to deals that will never show up in a spread sheet or e-mail chain. Talk to neighbors, squatters/house sitters. They're a gold mine. 2- I can speak intelligently about the house when I'm making my 'heads up' phone calls while waiting to receive my executed contract back. I can't tell you how consistently I see $15k rehab/ $30k rehab tossed around when in reality, I get to the house and find its more like $30k/$50K. Happens every single day to me. 3- I see everything happening in the neighborhoods. I speak to the guys working on a house with a dumpster in the driveway. I catch the homeowner putting that FSBO sign in their yard. I see that terrible commercial space right next to the subject that was conveniently left out of the listing photos.

The point isn't to knock those who utilize the massive volume in blind offering strategy, but to show the benefit of getting into the houses yourself (or at the very least, have a guy with rehab background that can lay eyes on it for you) and being in the field. There is also a drawback for buyers working with individuals who practice this, so be aware. Not to say it's all bad at all. If it works for others, great, it's just not really an option for the way I operate.