All Forum Posts by: Brad Ickes

I am in negotiations on a duplex in my town currently. I have offered 95000 on this with the asking price of 114000. This offer was accepted contingent on a home inspection. The home inspection is now back and I have found from it items which total to around 6000. I am asking the seller for credit towards anything safety, structural, or code related so I am only asking for 4000 of that and him to reduce sale price to 91000. These items include a rotten sill plate in the garage, gfi's throughout the house where needed and a small amount of knob and tube. In addition badly corroded valves for the heating system and replacing the PVC vent pipes coming out of the fuel tanks to fireproof material. He responded to this that he does not feel these are his responsibility to fix and feels as though the 2300 that he put into fuel recently should be a concession towards this. Keep in mind we do not close until the end of March so they are burning through this as we speak. Also we are planning on ripping the oil furnace out and putting in a high efficiency gas so I feel as though I should play hard ball and tell him to take his fuel which legally he can do before closing, if that is the case the PVC vents could go away however that's only worth 200. What's everybody's thoughts on this deal. This place has been on the market for over 500 days and this is a cash deal. If he loses this deal he now has to disclose these items.

I am in negotiations on a duplex in my town currently. I have offered 95000 on this with the asking price of 114000. This offer was accepted contingent on a home inspection. The home inspection is now back and I have found from it items which total to around 6000. I am asking the seller for credit towards anything safety, structural, or code related so I am only asking for 4000 of that and him to reduce sale price to 91000. These items include a rotten sill plate in the garage, gfi's throughout the house where needed and a small amount of knob and tube. In addition badly corroded valves for the heating system and replacing the PVC vent pipes coming out of the fuel tanks to fireproof material. He responded to this that he does not feel these are his responsibility to fix and feels as though the 2300 that he put into fuel recently should be a concession towards this. Keep in mind we do not close until the end of March so they are burning through this as we speak. Also we are planning on ripping the oil furnace out and putting in a high efficiency gas so I feel as though I should play hard ball and tell him to take his fuel which legally he can do before closing, if that is the case the PVC vents could go away however that's only worth 200. What's everybody's thoughts on this deal. This place has been on the market for over 500 days and this is a cash deal. If he loses this deal he now has to disclose these items.

I am in the midst of a deal currently on a for sale by owner duplex. I am rather new to investing and have more of a construction background than the real estate side. The biggest question and maybe the easiest to most that I have is what is the best way to find the market value prior to submitting an offer for this property? My issue is that I have known the owner my whole life which I feel as though makes it hard to negotiate. I am working with a realtor on other deals so I am not sure if I can ask them what they feel as though it would go on the market for or not. I know this house needs some obvious repairs which the owner either doesn't realize or is in denial of and I plan to have a home inspection done to negotiate off of but am still finding it hard to figure out the baseline. This owner has no idea what the value is and I feel she thinks it is higher than it's worth. Any help on how to proceed would be appreciated.