First Potential Wholesale Deal

[John M.]

Hi everyone. Long time reader, first time poster here. Introduction will follow.

I'm new to real estate investing, and I'm working on my first potential wholesale deal where a local seller saw my sign and wants to sell a house she & her mother own about 1 hour away. This seller threw out SO MANY of the motivation key words! "Over it", "Divorce", "Get rid of it", "get out of it", "tired of being a landlord".

Even if this isn't a deal, I'm going to use it as a learning experience (so here I am!). First, here are the stats on the deal:

3/1 property (Jim Walter home). Seller wants the loan of $48,000 paid off, and to "walk away with $10,000", which is very unreasonable for the below numbers, so I'm thinking I could easily talk her down. Seller is ok with leaving existing financing in place "if that's what it takes", however I wasn't thinking on my feet, and forgot to ask what the interest rate was.

Using zillow/realquest/eappraisal/trulia/redfin to identify estimates for the target property, ARV averaged out to $48,134.

Using nearby comparable sales (there weren't many), ARV estimated at $39,916 (which method should I use for ARV, typically they are pretty close but this one is way off?)

I'm assuming $10 repairs per sqft @ 1152 sqft as the house was built in 1972 and the seller said the only thing she would replace if she lived in it was windows. (is this reasonable?)

If the house is located in another city, do I need to find a title company in that city to work the transaction, or can that be done where I and the seller live?

Finally, I'm thinking I would have to take a seller financing approach on this, because the house is worth less than what is owed. Even if I did take a seller financing approach, would it be reasonable to assume that a rent-to-own buyer would agree to the loan of 48k, plus a down payment as my assignment fee?

[Wendell De Guzman]

John, this is a bad deal to wholesale. It's probably worth what they owe on it based on the comps. Also, estimating the repairs at $10/sqft is not right. You need to ask what repairs the property needs (say it needs updated kitchen and bath, new carpet, repainting, etc.). Based on that, you can calculate the repairs and then your MAO or maximum allowable offer.

So my advice: move on and find a better deal. A motivated seller is just one component of a good deal. The numbers has to work also. And this deal fails to meet the numbers.