How to approach a fixer owner

Question

I located a very decripit duplex in my area and I am searching County records to find the owner.

The duplex is in an area with rapidly rising prices, and I am a newbee investor.

What would you suggest as the best strategy to approach the owner to see if he will sell for a deeply discounted price?  What do you say, how do you approach, how do you develop a good business relationship with such an owner?

Thanks.

Micah Copeland · Answer

Once I get in contact with an owner I let them know that I am interested in buying property in there area, and then ask them if they have in problem properties they would like to sell. I used to ask for specific properties, but found the problem property terminology to work better for me.

If you do get him talking about the duplex then dig deeper and deeper with open ended questions until you can find a true motivation to sell. Once you know the sellers motivation you should use it in your negotiation. Find out what the problem is then fix it!

Micah Copeland · Answer

@David Voda Quick unrelated tip.. Make sure you tag someone with the @ sign then there name or they won't know you are asking them a follow up question.

Here are some examples of follow up questions I use...

"How long have you owned the house?"

"If you were buying the house.. whats some things you wish you knew?"

"Any repairs coming up that you can think of?"

"So why do you want to sell?"

"Why isn't it rented out?"

"How long has it been vacant?"

Depending on the situation there is an unlimited amount of questions you can ask... I just keep digging deeper and deeper until they tell me there motivation... Sometimes they will try and dodge it as long as possible, but I will get it out of them. Even if I have to straight up say, "look there is a reason why you want to sell or I wouldn't be here... are you just trying to move on or what?"

An example is I just got a quad under contract and he was sticking to the "you called me script" until I dug deeper and deeper and could hear a little venom in his voice when we talked about his current tenants.. So I kept digging into that until he was basically telling me only horrible things about the quality tenants he was getting. So I used that to knock an extra 30k off the price by assuring him he wouldn't have to go through the eviction process and I would handle it on my own dime and that why he should help me with the pricing.

David Voda · Answer

Thank you, Micah, that's an excellent strategy.  Would you mind giving me an idea of the kind of follow-up questions you ask to get to the seller motivation?