All Forum Posts by: Demos Loizides

Business law says a contract has 3 parts:
- offer
- acceptance
- consideration (not doing something for nothing)

The consideration can basically be the offer price. As a matter of fact, in Maryland, the tax records show sales prices as consideration.

John Miller - what you said may be true for Florida, but not in the Washington DC area.

I just recently started working with an investor friendly Realtor. I am sending him Offer to Purchase agreements to send to the listing agents. I'm stating I'll put the earnest money deposit (EMD) in escrow upon contract ratification. Right now I'm mentioning $500 as EMD (all my offers are less than $100K and some are less than $50K). I also mention a 15 day inspection contingency, which starts after contract ratification. At this point, I risk nothing.

Once a seller agrees to the Offer, I have 5 days to sign a contract.

I also mention I'll be using private funds, so proof of funds won't be asked for, which sometimes happens when you say it's an all cash offer. It won't require the me to submit a conventional loan app to the title company.

My farm includes about 100 absentee owners. I should probably do more mailings.

Andrew - I have been going seller direct, by driving around with my car sign; sending postcards to my farm, which was pulled from tax
records and junker drive bys; and advertising on CL.

My magnetic car sign says:

Quick Cash for
Your House
my website
my phone number

One quote I like says, "verbal offers aren't worth the paper they're written on".

I recently started looking for cheap houses with lots of equity on the MLS. This involves using larger earnest money deposits (EMDs). I'm only making 1 offer at a time and am using a 15 day inspection contingency and a private funding contingency to protect my EMD. I am using an addendum which restricts my loss to my EMD in the event of non performance.

Making 1 offer at a time with a short review/ratification period allows me to make several offers in a short period of time, without running the risk of spending a lot of money on EMDs and inspections.

Right now, I'm getting a lot of my buyers from CL. I'm using the MLS to find cheap houses with lots of equity and I have an investor friendly buyers agent. Even crappy looking "junkers" are on the MLS. That wasn't the case a few years ago.

Another option is to use an LLC to purchase the property and then sell the LLC.