How Do You Present Offers To Pay Off Seller 2nds Early At A Discount?

[Bryan Hancock]

The new year is upon us and some JV partners and I are going to start to offer to pay off seller 2nds carried at a discount to what is currently owed. One projects has a small balloon note due in two years and we are going to offer to pay it off at roughly half price to the seller that carried the paper.

How do you normally arrive at your offer price for these types of scenarios? This seller was quite motivated at the time we bought this property 3 years ago so my suspicion is that this will be attractive to him now. However, I really have no way of knowing without throwing the offer out there.

Ideas? How do you approach this normally?