Anyone know about Zebulon? Lower end houses?

Question

I have spoken with a seller about a house in Zebulon, NC and we have agreed on what he would like to get. The trouble is there are no sales near the house anytime recently. It is close to downtown but on a low income street.

Is anyone familiar with the area? I think I have a decent deal here, but I want to check with someone who knows the area to make sure I am not way off.  Was a 3 bedroom, but became 2 bedroom (could be 3), old house, but in decent shape.

For the record the Zillow, trulia, etc estimates are all over 80k, which seems outlandish.

Steven Pesavento · Answer

@Eric F. Yea for us its pretty hard to buy something with no comparables or sales in the area. Unless it's clearly a killer deal, sometimes it best to pass. Then again, depends on what you're looking to do with it! Dang what a crazy story. The things you deal with going direct to seller, am I right?

Eric F. · Answer

@Brandon McLean long story short, this guy was trying to sell his father's house. His father was on Medicaid and in a nursing home. He wanted me to help him "hide" it from the government so he could keep all the money without Medicaid knowing. I said hell no. I'm not in the fraud business. I'm in the real estate business. I told my lawyer what happened and he said "don't have anything to do with this guy going forward." Not that he had to tell me, I was already done with him.

The house was also on West Barbee street so thankfully the deal did not go through. I asked a guy I know in Zebulon about that street and I swear he said "Oh yea, my buddy has some units on there....he got stabbed collecting rent last year." I had already signed the deal so I would have closed if this guy was honest, but thankfully this guy gave me a reason to back out. Once I told him I would not hide the sale he didn't want anything to do with me anyway.

Sidenote: People are crazy. This dude straight up asked me to commit fraud. Even crazier is probably half the investors out there would have tried to help him instead of saying no. Commit Medicaid fraud to make a few thousand....no thanks!