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The Most In-Depth Case Study-Part Quatro

Jason Hanson
2 min read

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and that tomorrow you have a Happy New Year’s (and that you can remember most of it). If you haven’t done so yet, make your 2009 goals. Then break them down into monthly, weekly and daily goals. And…..don’t ever go to bed at night if you haven’t made your “to do” list for the next day ahead. The difference between success and failure is razor thin and writing down your goals will put you on the side of success.

Okay. I’m still on my quest for a new house and here’s where I’m at. Two weeks ago I was driving around and I called a number off of a “for rent” sign. When I finally got hold of the owner I “screened” him and was able to determine he was a very motivated seller. The house had been vacant for a while and the previous tenants had done some damage to the property. Since I knew he was motivated I set up an appointment with him.

At the appointment I showed up with my testimonials in hand, because I had told him that I was an investor, however I wanted to use the house as my primary residence. I “pitched” a lease option to him and he was happy with everything he heard. He was even happier that I would be living in the house and that he would get guaranteed rent. By the way, if you don’t have your scripts down cold for telling a seller about a lease option, learn them ASAP.

Since I’m not very motivated (remember I’m doing this because I want a place to put a hot tub) I negotiated on everything. I had him agree to providing lawn care for the entire lease, to replacing the counter tops and a few other minor things (when negotiating always go for as much as you can, all the owner can do is say no). Anyway, the owner tried to get me to commit to renting the place that day, but of course I didn’t do that.

I waited one week to call him back and when I did, he was very happy to hear from me (time increases motivation). We set up a meeting for this week to negotiate more details about the property such as monthly rent, rent credit amount and the price of the house. As always I plan to negotiate hard and get an awesome deal. If things go well then I plan on closing the deal that day and I will bring my paperwork with me just in case. Next week I’ll let you know if I closed the lease option deal and I will also go into greater detail about the numbers. Happy New Year’s………. (don’t do anything tonight that I wouldn’t do).

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.