Today, we got another house under contract. This was a seller that my VA contacted last week and he had tried selling his house couple of years ago and things didn’t work out so now he wanted to see what we could offer him.
He said he was looking for $100,000 for the house and he came up with that price based on the tax assessed value. It’s a 2 bed/1 bath house on a corner lot. The owner and his wife are elderly and are looking to move into a condo so they don’t have to take care of the all the maintenance issues.
I called the seller and spoke with him to confirm that he was interested in selling and gathered a couple of other pieces of information. I scheduled an appointment with the seller for Maria, my Project Manager, to meet him at the house. Usually, we have Maria and Jaime, my Contractor, meet the seller to get a better idea about the rehab cost. But in this case, the seller was wary about having multiple people at the appointment. So I told him that just Maria will be at the meeting.
Maria went to the meeting this afternoon at 1 PM and she called me on video call and walked me through the house. The house overall was dated but in good condition. The kitchen and bathroom will need to be updated and rest of the house will need cosmetic updates. The mechanicals were in good shape. Plumbing seemed to be all copper and the hot water heater was newer. The furnace and AC were also in good shape. The electric panel was updated. The seller had also spent money recently on waterproofing the entire basement.
Maria stepped out of the house and called me to say that the seller said he is ready to sell at $100,000. She also mentioned that the seller wants to sell the house and move into a condo. $100,000 is a bit high and I told Maria to go back at $80,000 with this proposal:
We will pay $80,000 for the house
We will pay all the closing costs
We will help him move. He won’t have to hire any moving company.
We will buy the house as-is. Anything he doesn’t want to take with him, he can leave behind
We will help him find a condo that he and his wife feel comfortable with
We will schedule the closing date for the house only after he has found a condo
He felt very comfortable with that proposal and signed the contract for $80,000. He told Maria that he wasn’t planning on signing the contract today but we made a very reasonable offer and he felt comfortable with it.
We have scheduled the closing date for April 30th to help him find a condo and help him move in the new place.
Maria, who is a licensed agent, now gets to earn a commission on the buy side of the transaction as well by helping the seller find a condo and then when we fix and list the house back, she will be the listing agent as well.
The seller is happy that we took care of his concerns and now hopefully we can find him a condo that he likes.
Sometimes you have to get creative. Sellers are not always looking for the highest price. They are looking for someone to help solve the problems, which we were able to do and get another one under contract.
