WOW!!! Please read and reply.

[James NA]

My partner and I(both newbies) got a lead from one of our fliers. Its for a house in a pretty good neighborhood with lots of houses being renovated. It was a call from a woman saying that she was interested in selling her house but she told me that she had to talk to her ex husband first and that she would have him call me. So when I talk to him he tells me that the house has been empty for almost 2 years. From the call I got the impression that the house was kind of forgotten by them. His overalll tone was disinterested as far as keeping the house was concerned. I tried to get him to get me an asking price but he asked me what I was offering for it. I told I would have to go by and check it out a little more before I could make a first offer. I went by to look at it and its a definite fixer upper. 2/1 replaced roof but has interior ceiling damage. Zillow appraises it at $139k. The tax assessor appraises it at 101k. So to be safe we used $115k as an ARV to structure a wholesale deal around. So with this deal we decided that we should use $30k as a starting point for negotiations. We planned and strategized what we would do WHEN he said no. We were only hoping to pitch $30k to open him up and get him talking about what he needed and what would be the lowest amount that he could take. The way we planned it our Max Allowable Offer would be around $80k....So I talked to him today and pitched him the $30k offer... and he did the most unpredictable thing that he could have done... HE SAID YES. Now as newbs we are kind of faced with a problem, a good problem but a problem nonetheless. We were not prepared at all for him to accept our lowball offer. We don't know whether or not he's gonna change his mind(although he gave us no indication that he would) or whether he has full authorization to set a price for the house to be sold. It just seems to good to be true. If we did a double closing we could make a ton from this deal but we had decided to start with assignments because they were easier. We're gonna do due diligence, full title search, appraisal, inspection yadda yadda yadda and if everything is everything we DO NOT want to lose this deal. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Eric Foster]

Since you were presenting an offer... the offer should have been in writing...

That way you can first talk about it... Then sign about it!

You always need to be ready, when they are ready…

Sign the deal… and the due diligence stuff can be done later… Just have an “out” clause or two in your contract letting you cancel should you need to…

Always get the contract signed ASAP.