All Forum Posts by: Ben Zimmerman

There was no counteroffer made, you can't make a counteroffer once a legally binding contract has been signed, instead all proposed changes are amendments to the original offer.  A sellers rejection of this amendment is not grounds to terminate the original contract.  The original contracts 'meeting of the minds' is still valid regardless of any rejected amendments.  In this instance the buyer was provided a notice to perform in order to remove his contingencies, there is nothing that says the buyer can not continue to negotiate items during this 48hrs.  As long as he removes his contingencies within the allotted 48hrs (which appears in this case he did) then he has performed as required and the contract stands.  In this case CAR lawyers were consulted and they believed the contract still stands, so I think it's fairly safe to assume that their opinion is correct and the contract stands.

Page 2 para 3 of this FAQ page details the difference between counteroffers and amendments and details that rejecting an amendment does not void the original contract.

http://triagents.com/Legal/Cou...

My non legal opinion.

If the seller is paying you to walk away, then this has nothing to do with the inspection or the roof, and has everything to do with the seller simply doesn't want to sell anymore.  

It also doesn't make sense that they would threaten litigation to get out of the contract.  If they are walking away from the deal (for any reason) it would generally be you taking them to court to perform, and not the other way around with them taking you to court so that they don't have to perform.  This sounds like nothing more than posturing by their agent in the hopes that you will back down and just take the money and leave.  

If the CA board believes you are still under contract, then you are highly likely still under contract and they have a legal obligation to perform.  Obviously consult your attorney, but I would posture right back.  Let the sellers agent know that steering is illegal and that if this case goes to trial that you intend on reporting them to the real estate ethics committee.   It's amazing once a realtor gets personally threatened how their mind suddenly changes and they start talking their client into selling so that they don't get reported.  Then I would let them know that you are prepared to go to court not only to force the sale of the home, but also your legal fees, lost rental revenue during the court process, emotional damages as the court case has you stressed out, as well as personal expenses as you have to take time away from your regular job to conduct this court case.... basically pile up any applicable fees that are allowable under CA law so they realize just how expensive this could get for them. 

Either way this likely won't go to court and instead would go to mediation.  I don't know how hot your market is, or how smoking of a deal this was, but a guaranteed 10k payday with no risk isn't exactly something to completely ignore.

The more negative items on your credit report, the lower your score will go.  High credit scores take the biggest hit when new negative items are introduced to your credit report.  This second one will continue to drop your score, but its likely not going to hurt quite as much as the first 75 point hit did.

I am reading your posts, and I am disagreeing with you on several points.

You make it sound as if this situation is one sided, that you are right, and the agent is wrong.  However it's entirely possible for both people to be right, or for both people to be wrong.  I understand you're upset, and when people are upset it's human nature to only see fault in others, and not yourself.  But being a neutral third party allows for viewing the scenario through a different lens.

Agents should always request an extension if their client asks, it doesn't matter if the client has a valid reason to request an extension or not, the agent should still at least ask for the extension. However, at the same time clients should do the things within their power to not require an extension in the first place and close on time as they had originally agreed to with the seller. After all per your quote the only thing that matters is 2 people doing what they agreed to, and you agreed to close in 10 days. You say you never initiated the funds transfer from your investment account because you were waiting for the HOA docs, but that is ultimately just an excuse because having those documents is not a prerequisite for you to start arranging your finances. You willingly chose to delay the transfer because you thought it would be more advantageous for you to wait.

Now it's your money, you can transfer it whenever you want.  You can transfer it immediately or you can wait.  You can buy a house, or you can not buy a house.  You can sit or you can stand.  We all make decisions every day, and those decisions have consequences both good and bad.  You chose to wait to transfer your money, which has led to the current situation we are talking about.  

Had you made a different decision and started the funds transfer when your offer was first accepted, you could have reviewed the documents Thursday evening, and closed on Friday as originally scheduled. Or you could have had questions about the documents and contacted the HOA for clarification Friday morning prior to closing.

Would it have been nice to receive the documents well in advance?  -Of course!  But fast closings are chaos, even when things go perfectly they are still inherently messy.   If you are wanting to be able to do things at your own pace and not feel rushed, then you shouldn't agree to a fast 10 day closing in the first place.  It would have been nice to have the HOA docs well in advance, but the only thing that technically stopped you from closing is the fact that you don't have the money ready.  Everything else is just background noise.

But regardless, you are allowing a personal grudge with your agent from stopping you from moving forward.  Who cares about your agent, screw them!!  The only person you really need to be concerned with is yourself.  You said the deal was good, so close on it!  Make some money, and then never speak to your agent again.  Leave them some bad reviews if that makes you feel any better, but don't walk away from deals because you have a personal thing against your agent whom you have likely never met and will certainly never meet again.

I'm still not trying to be mean, and this will be my last reply to this thread as I wish you nothing but the best of luck in your investing journey. Did the agent do some things wrong that are worth complaining about? -Probably. But you can't control what other people do, you can only control yourself. Learn from any mistakes and always be better at the next deal then the last deal. Deals will always be messy, the only thing you can do is be properly prepared so you can take decisive action when the opportunity presents itself. It sounds like this deal is going to fall apart, but I think it's important to realize that no matter what the background noise was, ultimately the only thing that stopped the purchase of the home was a lack of funds on closing date. In a perfect world you would have had the HOA docs earlier, but getting the documents the night prior didn't need to be a show stopper. Had the funds been transferred on time you could still be frustrated with your agent, while you sit at home and pop a Champaign bottle to celebrate your new purchase with family/loved ones. But because of decisions that were made, there is no celebration to be had, only the being frustrated part. -Good luck in your endeavors.

A 10 day closing isn't the time to do things at your pace, a 10 day closing is peddle to the metal while you engage the afterburner.

You mention some HOA stuff, but later go on to say that ultimately you are ok with the HOA stuff, except you don't like the manner in which it was presented, and instead the real problem is that your agent is pushing you to close when you aren't ready to close due to funding. Why would you try to fire your agent for pushing for you to get your finances in order like you said you would when you put an offer on a 10 day closing.

If you're making quick close, cash offers, you need to have your finances already lined up, the fact that you aren't ready isn't your agents fault.

The investment account should have been liquidated the day your offer was accepted, that way the funds could transfer and settle and be ready to go on closing date. Trying to leave the funds in the account for an extra few days trying to squeak out a few extra cents in interest while you 'qualify' the house seems silly. If I was the agent and my clients money wasn't ready to go after we had offered quick cash close then I would be losing my mind right about now.

A 10 day no inspection, quick close, with cash offer should only be used when you know you want the house no matter what. It's not the time to be picky about subsections of an HOA agreement nor is it the time to slowly start getting your finances in order.

I'm genuinely not trying to be mean here, we've all made mistakes in our investing careers, myself included.  Making mistakes is how we learn and improve ourselves.  However I think it's important that we first acknowledge that a mistake was made, as we can't learn from our mistakes until we recognize that we have made a mistake in the first place.  Not having funds available on the date of closing on a cash deal is a pretty big mistake.

Close the deal, and find a new agent for next time.  Don't let personal feelings get in the way of closing deals.  There is no practical way to switch agents at this point without being required to pay the full commission yourself.

Additionally I would caution against these super quick 10 day closing windows.  It never ceases to amaze me how many fast closings require extensions which isn't fair to the seller, and I've seen numerous sellers deny those extensions.

 I'm relatively certain that no lease can force a tenant to waive their rights.  If the state law requires a minimum of 28 days notice, then the lease can not force the tenant to waive that right and impose a stricter timeline to provide notice.  The fact that both parties willingly agree to something doesn't matter if the law requires something different, I mean two people could willingly engage in prostitution, but just because they both willingly agree to knock boots for cash doesn't mean its suddenly legal. 

The same can be said about security deposits, if the state law says you can only charge 1.5 months worth of security deposits, then you can't suddenly charge 2 months worth just because you put a clause in your lease that the tenant agreed to.

State law always trumps what is in a lease.  If the law says its 28 days, then its 28 days.  

*I'm still not a lawyer, no legal advise should be implied*

*I'm not a lawyer, nor am I from WI or familiar with their specific laws*

Generally speaking you can't put clauses into a lease that violates state law.  A 2 second non-scientific google search into Wis. Stat. Ann. § 704.19 says that Wisconsin (I'm assuming your friend also lives there) requires a 28 day notice to terminate a month to month lease.  Once the lease rolled over from a yearly lease, and turned into a month to month lease the 60 day notice to vacate in the lease became irrelevant as state law dictates that only 28 days is now required.  

The landlord is probably correct in the usage of the security deposit as rent, as most states have very very specific rules about what the security deposit can/can't be used for.

@Leilah Davis:  Honest question, have you ever landed a deal by cold calling?  I have never tried that method but I would assume that the sheer amount of effort required to call enough people at random to generate a sufficient number of actual leads would be pretty astronomical.  If you have a legitimate and sufficient reason to believe that the person NEEDS to sell the home for whatever reason then calling may be efficient, but simply because someone like myself is an out of state investor is hardly a reason to disrupt their day and I would always be certain to bump the number against the DNC list.  Because the chances of cold calling someone and finding a deal is already pretty insanely slim to none, but those odds get 10x worse when you attempt to call someone who has already gone out of their way to let the world know that they don't want to be called.

In fact in many ways an investor calling me is fairly insulting when you stop and analyze the potential reasons this investor thinks I am a motivated seller willing to let my properties go cheaply.  

There are so much better and efficient ways to generate leads than simply generate the largest possible lead funnel and rely on the fact that even at a 0.001% success rate, if you blast your text message out to 100,000 people you will still land a deal.  Spending time looking for clients is exhausting, why not let your clients find you instead?  

Facebook and Google already know everything about someone, why not try running targeted ads?  I was looking at buying an autographed photo of the old Mike Tyson's Punch Out video game, and now every random webpage I look at is blasting me with ads centered around that one particular photo trying to get me to finally buy it. 

I am military and one of my favorite methods is targeting fellow military members and buying the homes subject to the existing loan since many members move every 2-3 years and often don't have sufficient equity built up to really make selling the traditional way and paying agent fees worth it especially if they bought using a 0 down VA loan which is very common. In this case I simply advertise on the base newspaper which is super cheap given how frequently people come and go there are always reliable leads to be found.

Or how about creating a simple "I Buy Houses" website and spend a few bucks to have it professionally made and SEO optimized?  Based on many of his previous posts over the years, I think @Jerryll Noorden gets aroused at the mentioning of SEO, and while that statement may be crude, I doubt that Jerryll would disagree too strongly with my statement because of just how amazing SEO can be. SEO WORKS!!  One good website can deliver dozens of qualified leads to your doorstep day after day after day with virtually no effort required other than the one time investment of setting up the webpage.  Update your website with pictures of every new home you buy, and feature testimonial quotes from the seller about how easy the process was or something like that.

How about running some radio ads on the golden oldies radio stations targeting the older retiring generation looking to downsize or move into assisted living facilities?

If you want to target foreclosures or pre foreclosures then calling or sending post cards is super generic because they probably got post cards from at least a dozen other investors. And I'm sure phone calls from investors are even worse, not to mention the phone calls from creditors, if I was them I certainly wouldn't answer the phone when it rang.  Instead why not call up the few local foreclosure defense lawyers, or probate attorneys, or divorce lawyers, or whatever demographic you want to target and simply take those lawyers out to lunch every once in awhile and let them know what services you have to offer and how you might be able to help their clients.  

When Grandma dies if you call the family asking to buy Grandma's house because you see its going through probate, you sound super creepy and predatory.  However what if instead the probate lawyer tells the family that if they want to sell the house he knows someone that can buy it quickly so the family can properly grieve instead of worrying about this big long drawn out process to sell the house.  In this situation the family won't even consider selling to anyone but you.

There are dozens of other good ways to reach people and these are just a few random examples.  The bottom line is that whatever method you choose, there has got to be a more efficient way to go about finding leads than simply cold calling OOS investors by the thousands.

I probably get around 10 calls per week, and dozens more automated text messages asking to buy my properties. There's no nice way to say this, but you're being an a$$hole by calling people that you already know don't want to be called. Putting the legal aspect aside, its just douchebaggery in its finest form. If I could unilaterally block every single phone number from the Phoenix area I would because of people like you.

You say don't get all riled up, but you have no idea how frustrating this is when it goes on year after year. I live in a different time zone so 8-9pm when it's supposed to be quiet time with the family some jerk off calls offering me his 'service'. It's quite literally an every day occurrence. Receiving a random phone call isn't the end of the world, but do you think you're the only person doing this? Multiply these calls times the hundreds of wannabe investors in Phoenix, and suddenly it becomes a daily occurrence and those minor inconveniences of getting phone calls really starts to compile.

While the FTC is a joke, individual lawyers aren't. I have had my legal team sue several people and win monetary damages. So whatever you 'feel' like the law says, the reality is that courts are ruled by judges, and when judges are interpreting the law, they don't like to see people get bombarded with harassing phone calls, ESPECIALLY if its proven they were told to stop. I win $500 per call, and significantly more if I can prove I've specifically already told you once not to call again. I could probably make an entire living off of suing people in this way, but most times they are small time investors or wholesalers and I have pity on them. But God help me if I start to remember your phone number. specifically...

Winning the case isn't the hard part, the hard part is generally finding a lawyer that is willing to file the paperwork because there typically isn't a ton of money to be made so they don't have a lot of incentive to take your case. But all you need is one hungry lawyer still trying to pay off his $200,000 student loans. If I actually still lived in Phoenix I would probably sue a lot more often since small claims court requires minimal paperwork and I could do it myself.