@Varun Talluri I was encouraged by one of the bp podcasts I listened to yesterday that mentioned telling everyone you know that you are in the market for buying homes. While I was at work as a home health physical therapist, I was driving up to my patient's house and noticed that the neighborhood looked old but well taken care of. I just struck up a conversation about how much I liked the neighborhood and how nice their house was, etc. They were very appreciative and friendly. Then I asked them for a quick favor to let me know if they know of anyone in the neighborhood that may be interested in selling. Once I asked them that, they casually mentioned that they were looking to downsize and wanted to sell their house but didn't want to do the work to get it ready/cleaned up to sell. I kindly told them that I'd be very interested in their home and would purchase it as is and off market so they wouldn't have to fix it up and deal with showings, etc. They were excited and wanted to talk more after they thought about it for a day or two. I will be following up with them this weekend. It just took a simple and friendly conversation. They loved when I complimented their house and all the things they had done to it. Now I just want to be prepared to negotiate and correctly do a purchase agreement/contract. As I've never done this before, I am interested to hear about successful transactions like this.
