All Forum Posts by: Brett Tousley

Respectfully, it sounds like you don't have a handle on the pricing or market trends in the area.  Rather than waste the time of several Realtors to figure out your pricing and why your marketing isn't working, why not just hire one to sell your home so that you know you are getting full market value?

I'm a Realtor and I'm typing this from my personal home I bought a few years ago from a FSBO who was trying to save the commission. Somebody saved it alright but it wasn't them. I'm sure someone will follow up and say FSBO is the way to go but the facts are unless you are in a hot seller's market most people are better off hiring a pro.

I guess I'm the only one that immediately thought it could be a pot grow operation?

How did it turn out Tariq?

I'm wondering why you don't call an attorney as @Benjamin Pekarek suggested?  That way you will have an idea of how much it will cost and how long it will take to evict the occupant in your area.  To me that would be my first step.

Once you know how much it will costs and how long it may take, you can decide whether you want to close on an occupied property with no lease in place or not.  

Just like you should know your numbers for the ARV and rehab, knowing your numbers for eviction or cash for keys is something you need to know to make a good decision.

Seems like asking them to leave formally in writing, offering cash for keys and evicting with the attorney is the order to pursue right?

But that all assumes it's even a wise idea to close upon this house with this person living there.  

I hope you figure it out and make some money!

Welcome to the area Justin and to bigger pockets Justin!

Dell and many others are right on the money! I recently had some new investors straight out of a guru program that wanted to offer 50%-60% of list price without regard to whether it was a deal or not. Of course most often it would be a deal but not always. I pulled up a cma of all the REO homes that have sold in the past year in my market and pointed out that they averaged around 97% of sales price to list price. That was helpful to them and they worked to get a handle on their true numbers. Shortly after that they bought their first HUD home and successfully flipped it for a profit.

Find that ARV, deduct your rehab budget, costs and desired profit then make your offer and move one.

I'm not familiar with your market rents. In my area, I often get calls from hopeful renters on my real estate listings that are for sale NOT for rent.  I spend more time chasing them away than trying to attract them.  My point is that renters are very easy to attract here.

For me, in my area, I use a basic rule. If you aren't even getting calls, you are significantly overpriced. If you are getting calls and showings but no offers you are somewhat overpriced.  If you are getting calls, showings and applications you are in the correct range.

This is for sales not rentals but its a tried and true way to gauge pricing by monitoring interest.

So the short answer is I suspect you are overpriced.  No amount of fluffy ad script will overcome that.

BUT, your ad looks like it is targeted to a "C" (DISC type). With the exception of the summary which you should remove, it just lists the facts and various walking distances. That's great if you are renting to engineer types but you if you want to appeal to all types of renters, I'd add a short paragraph (not 3 or 4 like a typical FSBO) describing how lovely the home is, how quiet the street is etc.

But like I said, I suspect your primary issue is pricing.  Good Luck!

Hi Abby,

Welcome to BP!  I'm in Richland too and was just out looking at a couple of flip prospects yesterday.  They go quick around here!

If everything you said is true and you want to save the deal, your agent should be stepping and fetching to get this deal saved.  If they aren't capable of getting their NAID worked out, you may be better off with somebody else in the future.

If they aren't up to the task, you may try this.

1. Search for your agent here:

http://www.hudhomestore.com/Listing/BrokerSearch.a...

2. If they appear on this list, you should have a good shot of saving this if you can get in touch with the right person.  If you used an agent listed on their website, that may be a compelling enough reason to get the asset manager to reconsider.

If they aren't on the list, you may have to go to plan B. Plan B being wait for it to hit the market again. It is very common in my market area for HUD homes to fail to close with the initial winning bid and return to the market. Not sure about your market but considering the sketchy property condition reports I see here and in my former market, I expect yours may be the same.

I wish you luck but if it doesn't work out, there will be another deal.  

Timely topic for me as I just spoke with Do Hard Money earlier today.  

While I feel like I have a fair bit of experience flipping, that experience has always been as the Realtor not the investor.  One thing I am absolutely sure of is that I want a reliable, professional, honest lender in my corner as an investor prior to getting a home under contract.  I want to know you will close and I want to know all the potential reasons you may no close up front prior to bringing you my deal.

Just recently one of my flip investors was left hung out to dry with no money to close when their lender decided he couldn't fund the 70% of ARV purchase they had under contract. That could have easily killed the deal but my clients were able to scramble to find another lender and close with a hard fought extension a week or so late.

So I called Do Hard Money to get a list of their rates, fees involved and the overall process.  I found the rep I spoke with had a hard time communicating the program to me.  

I suspect there was a delay on the phone line that caused this or maybe he was new IDK.  But eventually I got the info I needed and decided that this particular company was only going to be my very last resort for funding.  I could probably work around the fees but the upfront $2500.00 immediately tripped my trigger that I needed to research this company more.

I am still on the hunt for private lenders or a local lender with less negative feedback and hopefully without the 2 bpo requirement.  I'm in the business and I know many bpo's aren't worth much more than a zestimate considering what most banks pay agents for them.     

 Hi Ricky,  I probably should have a list of like minded Realtors across the country but unfortunately I do not.  I could certainly hunt around for a Realtor in your area and try to collect a referral fee from that agent but I think that I would be doing you and them a disservice.  I'll share the "why" at the bottom of this post.

I think you would be much better served to find an agent that will perform these tasks for you on your own.  Hopefully, someone will contact you based off of your post, if not, here are some of the ways I would seek out an investor friendly Realtor if I weren't already one.

1. Just walk into a brokerage and ask for their investment specialist. Then interview them and determine if it's a good fit for you. I try to do business only with people that I can physically look eyeball to eyeball with. Yes, I've sold homes and land for people I've never met, but I always prefer to meet a person in the flesh. This is probably the route I would take. You may be surprised but the vast majority of agents out there have no idea what a good flip prospect really looks like and they often refer investors to someone that does within their brokerage.

2. Run an ad on craigslist looking for one. Any Realtor you want to work with is probably already scouring CL looking for FSBO's anyhow. It's free and could be productive.

3. Find agents that are already working with rehab investors.  The easiest way is to search the mls for agents that are showing up as buyer agents of reo/distressed homes and listing agents of flips.  But you need access as a non mls member and convincing a member who you don't intend to work with to find their replacement could be tough. :)   If you can't find an agent (friend or family member) willing to do that work for you, you can search through the tax records for flips (sales and purchases within a few months) and then google search the old listing address to see who sold the property.  

4. Of course you could contact other investors or members of a local REI group but if they really have a rock star agent feeding them deals, I'm not sure they would offer up their names readily. Maybe they would but I wouldn't put money on it.

Why most Realtors don't want to work with flip Investors.

Most agents will jump across the desk when you tell them you are an all cash investor looking to buy several flip homes a month.  But once they learn how much work goes into that, many will lose their ambition quickly.  Very much like new investors!

The truth is, working with most investors, especially new investors, can be a losing proposition for a real estate agent. The majority of bank owned/REO/Shortsale homes on the MLS in my area aren't really a good deal for a flip investor. If I am relying only on the MLS (which most agents do) to find deals, you probably won't be buying many of them a year.

That doesn't work for me because I am spending a lot of time looking at homes, establishing ARV's and repair estimates on the few that do meet the standards. If the investor doesn't buy it, it's just lost effort and money to me.

Add in the fear that you will be asking for a discounted commission on the listing (almost always a bad idea) and the distrust that you'll buy the good deal and then FSBO it, lease option it or list it with someone else and very few are truly willing to work with flip investors.

While it is true that most agents don't understand what an investor really needs in a deal, most "investors" don't ever really invest in a meaningful way.  Sure they may buy a home or two but the vast majority don't really succeed in real estate investment.  That's why you see so many "Hey, I'm a new investor and really fired up to do a deal" posts on bigger pockets but far less "Here's my 10th home I flipped" posts.   Unless the investor is truly buying 1, 2 or more homes a month, it's hard to justify all the work that goes into it from the agent's end.  There is lower hanging fruit available for motivated agents generally.