How to deal with a really hard seller when wholesaling.

Question

I am having problems with a seller, he’s been very difficult to deal with. I have his property under contract with intent to assign the contract to an end buyer. The buyer walked thru the property, and everything was fine except the roof, it’s got hail damage, and the buyer doesn’t want to deal with fixing it. The seller mentioned if anything is wrong with the roof he would file a claim to fix it. But when i told him the buyer checked the roof and it need to get fixed/ file a claim before closing. He lied and said it’s perfectly fine, even having his roofer on the phone to say it’s in perfect condition. The buyer didn’t want to deal with the seller because she knows he’s a hard person to deal with, so she backed out. I found another buyer but the seller insisted the house would only be walked one more time because his family lives there, understandable but the contract says I can have any prospective buyer walk thru at any time convenient for the seller. I had the new buyer walk thru but wanted to send his roofer to look at the roof, which the roofer discovered the hail damage the first buyer said there was. Meanwhile the seller was still denying there was no issues with the roof. He called me later in the day to say the roof is damaged by hail, and he’s gonna call his insurance. But said he knows it’s a cheap insurance and they will only pay $2000 - $3000 so he doesn’t want to call them. I insisted he calls them and we work with whatever they pay for the roof because we have to close in 12 days. He later texted me saying he will not fix the roof cos I signed contract ‘ as is’ so he would not call insurance to fix the roof, after he told me he would do that a day before. And he said he would give me my deposit back to dissolve the contract , get the money from the insurance and spend it. I know it would take a lot of patience to read thru all this. Someone please offer me a suggestion, as this deal means everything to me, I’ve been working on it for two weeks!

Thank you!

Logan Crowder · Answer

Unfortunately, he does kinda got you there if the contract does in dead say you've agreed to purchase the property as is. The seller does not have to do anything to fix the house if he doesn't want to. For future reference, you should have a clause in the original contract stating something along the lines of canceling that 'as is' bit or the seller allows the buyer to assign this contract and allows the assignees to do any due diligence before entering into a binding contract, etc. A lawyer would know better how to draft that to be enforceable.

Did anyone quote on how much it would be to fix the damage? Let's just say hypothetically it cost $2,000 and your assignment fee is to be $12,000 then why don't you negotiate with the buyer that you will cover the cost to repair up to the quote received. Getting the deal done is more important than how much you make. 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

It's hard to say how much you can negotiate with the seller without knowing who he is and his situation. All of that would change how I approach him and try to negotiate with him to make it work. Perhaps hitting his emotional side could work, maybe he has family somewhere else and by selling this home it allows him to be with them or closer. Perhaps he's selling for financial reasons and I could then go back to him explaining that by avoiding some minimal effort such as calling insurance to deal with some issues could cost him big in the long run because when the market is sh*t in the next couple years (if it gets worse) he will have to hire a Realtor and pay 6% to sell it nevermind the fact that his house is at peak value right now (depending on your market but most places hit peak in 2018) and if he decides in a year he wants to sell it will be for less money.

There is always an angle with someone you just need to find it, and sometimes yes it is very hard to do so.

The worst case scenario is you get your money back and can mark this down as an 'experience' deal

How to deal with a really hard seller when wholesaling.

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