Greetings All,
My name is Dan, and I have been a Realtor for a little over a year, and I recently moved to Greenville, SC. I've had my eyes on the upstate for years, and it is as amazing an awesome as everyone made it out to be!
I got my license when I was living in the retirement/equestrian town of Aiken, SC, and if you didn't have the right last name or $200,000 cash in hand, you weren't getting any help. Also, the locals thought satan lived in ATMs, and while they all have cell phones and email accounts, none of them replied to email or answered their phones because that mean they would actually have to do something that day, and that anything newer than the 60's was too new fangled and there fore evil. I have/had a list of where I emailed countless agents to no avail, and gave up calling after the third or fourth time. It took three weeks to get a reply on a house, and when they did reply, it was to inform me that A) they were training the new girl on how to reply to email and B) when I told them I had proof of funds, they quit talking to me. After I got my license, every agent in my office came to me because I knew investors and boy oh boy did they have the perfect investor deal!!! The owner's meth head son was living in it, they started repairs and stopped, it was in the bad part of town, and he bought high and won't take a penny under $30,000 on a house that might be worth $5,000-$10,000 (I think he paid half that for the houes originally). Also, the cops had to be called because the son broke in and decided to paint his hallucinations on the wall. My favorite incident was the agent who came to the HUD house that a former patient of mine owned (I was an EMT for nearly eight years). She refused to enter the house becuase of her "allergies." Parts of the floors were sunk in, I think the guy took a mobile home and cut one side off and butted it up to his SF becuase you could open a window that was flush against a brick wall, and the house that was once really nice had been wrecked by negligent family and the effects of sitting there. Being my first HUD, I asked her if making a crazy low ball offer would be offensive or get her in trouble. She said no to both becuase the commission was already built in, no matter what the house got sold for. I went home, crunched numbers, and made that low ball offer. Not only did she take it personal, she refused to make the offer in part because the house was in good condition. The one she refused to walk through. When I offred her $500 out of my pocket to make the offer, she said she worked WAY too hard to make a low offer. I have made those type of offers for an investment team, and they do get accepted...until the closing attorney or his receptionist flat out lied to us and said the contract wouldn't be accepted, even though it already was. She waited till the last minute on Friday to tell us this (this firm's way of dealing with its issues), and we couldn't clarify the issue in time (this was during the ice storms that wrecked the south east, so a lot of the office people we had to deal with were stuck at home). My guys panicked and forfeited their earnest money. A coworker scooped the house up when it came back on the market for 5k more than our winning bid. My guys had intentions of whole saling that deal for 5k. My coworker was working for a land lord who was looking to increase his portfolio.
I say all that to say I've dealt with just about every kind of agent, especally those who don't understand an investor's needs or time frame. I've dealt with good ol' boys and old money/old people ways. If you need any help, I'd be honored to help. If there are any meet ups, I would love to go. Heck, anyone want to hang out, grab lunch, and talk shop or the weather or celebrate a deal or see a movie or what ever, hit me up!
I look forward to meeting with and working with many of you for a long time to come!
-Dan
