All Forum Posts by: Johann Jells

As I understand the law today, banks must get an appraiser from a pool rather than choosing one, so there's a firewall that there wasn't in the past. So why am I told that one bank won't accept the appraisal commissioned by another? It seem all this accomplishes is "lock in" to the 1st bank unless you want to eat the cost of another appraisal. It seems very consumer unfriendly in an era where these kinds of loans are heavily regulated and more or less a commodity product.

I have an appraisal scheduled for tomorrow for a cashout refi on a 3 family investment rental that they were only willing to lend 70%. I'm having 2nd thoughts and think I will delay to shop for a 75% that will be more likely to let me eliminate the 6.5% loan on another property.

The deal is dead. They signed a contract for an undisclosed higher price, and my attorney advised me it wasn't worth continuing the battle.

I spoke to the seller, and even though none of his 5 properties can possibly be covering their expenses, he doesn't realize he's going to go bankrupt. And he's a math Professor! Go figure.

We're on to the next deal already, but we'll never go to the listing broker again.

J Scott: My theory is the seller is ignorant of all the shenanigans. I've gotten ahold of an email address for him, and am going to try to get in touch.

I just got back from the County records office, and he's got a single mortgage for $495. He's not quite as under on his other 4 properties. He's simply got nothing to gain from not letting us negotiate with the lender, so why tank the contract?

He's going to try to talk to the seller attorney today and see what's up there. There seems to be disagreement between them in just what the 3 day review means. You'd think that would be pretty established, huh?

He doesn't have a good guess what the main game is either. If the seller didn't want to sell at anywhere near our price why did he sign? My projects for today is research his mortgages and maybe try and call him.

Hi all, I think I'm a "novice" level investor, My wife & I own 2 urban rental buildings with a total of 9 units including my own, the older for 14 years. I'm the super & renovator.

Here's my riddle: I made an offer on a nearby 3 unit property with good numbers (7.7 x rents) and a good but not outstanding location that had gotten better in the boom. When I called to make the offer the broker (a junior in the office of the listing agent) tells me the lister has "over asking" offers already and I need to be higher to compete. I go 15k over the asking of 340k, doing one of those full contract offers and giving a substantial check of 30k. It gets accepted over the weekend, signed on Sunday, emailed us on Monday afternoon. Now the fun begins.

The agent calls Tuesday and says the lister has new offers and I need to sweeten the deal or I'll lose it in the 3 day attorney review period. I say "do you have a written contract offer?" "No". I say I'm reluctant to play this game. I'll think about it. I call my attorney and he says sit tight, either they'll send a disapproval of the contract, or we'll have a deal midnight Wed. So nothing comes in and Thursday he sends them a letter presuming we have a deal and asking for various docs. They freak out. The sellers attorney sends a belated disapproval of the contract.

The part I've left out so far is the part they left out except for the clause they snuck in the offer that I didn't catch in my making the offer but my attorney did of course: "3rd party review required". It's a short sale.

So......we're trying to figure out what game the brokers are playing. The seller could give a crap what the sale price is, he's at least 150k under on this place, perhaps with a 2nd. He'll see nothing no matter what it sell for. The brokers "higher offer" was vapor the 2nd time, and likely the 1st. The best part is the sellers attorney, in a longer letter where he desperately tries several different reasons why the contract's no good, including the bank will never approve it and the 3 days started on Monday when it was turned over to the brokers and not Sunday when it was signed and dated, says the reason he didn't send my attorney a disapproval letter is because the brokers told him our attorney was the one who they referred to us in the email forwarding the signed contract! They figured they had us boxed in all around.

So if you've read this far, do you have any insight into what they're up to? If the bank was sure to reject our offer, why are they trying so hard to convince us the contract's DOA? The lawyer went so far as to say "the buyers should accept the fact that their contract was not mean to be. Seller has been consulting with his lender's loss mitigation dept for weeks and he knows the offer will not be accepted" WTF?!! Then why did he accept the contract?! And even now, why not let the bank reject us and the issue is solved?! I wonder if the seller has any idea what's going on. We know his attorney has a relationship with the brokers too, they actually made the mistake of giving us his card as a referral also!

Our only guess so far is that our "in review contract" was to be used to leverage someone else in the game somehow, and we were never supposed to actually have an intact contract, but they screwed up. It still seems like a long shot, but now I feel that if they're so desperate to not let our offer go to the mortgage holder, there must somehow be an opportunity for us.

That's the story, it reads a little like the opening of a cheap novel huh? I hope nobody disappears mysteriously, especially with our money! It's a national brokerage chain though...