I need to be cheered up, and helped to figure this out

[Maiko Miyake]

I am a newbee investor, and was on a way to make my first offer. But then, it was shot down even before I made an offer. The seller's agent called my agent and said that they had just received a unacceptable offer and that an acceptable offer to them is 35% more than what I was about to offer :cry:

The thing is, the seller is a fellow investor, but not a very smart one. He bought this property for condo conversion, at top of the market and started the process. Then, he got caught between competing projects that he was working on and could not complete the one I was looking at. The project is left in the midth of it, the property looks miserable, went down in value since the time he bought it. But he is still asking for just below market for a totally fixed up property. I also learnt that his option was foreclosure. So here I am, I thought I could offer what I came up. I used the property analysis tool on this site and figured out the max that I could offer, which was, 35% less than what apparantly they are willing to accept. So I am bummed. I was so excited at the thought of making my first offer. I know I should just get used to it, and I promise I will get over it. I just wanted to vent.

But I am also trying to understand something here. OK, at the offer I was making, the seller would have lost his shirt. But wouldn't it still be a better option than going foreclosure? he held the property on his name, not on LLC. Especially when he is working on another investment project, wouldn't one want to make sure he has access to credit? Oh well, I guess there are so many different scenarios and one can only speculate. But I wanted to hear from seasoned professionals out there what goes through your mind when you know you made a bad decision and it is a matter of deciding how and when to cut it loose.