How many offers do you write a week?

[Michael G.]

I've heard that in order to buy houses at a deep discount you have to write LOTS of offers.

I'm curious how many offers wholesalers are writing on a weekly basis? 10, 30, 50 a week?

Are they REO's or just plain vanilla MLS listings?

PS - Does anyone ever pursue expired listings?

[J Scott]

Originally posted by Greg P.:

J, is there a reason you don't make more offers? Is there any harm in making a ton of low balls as long as you strategically contact one agent per week etc?

The big reasons are:

1. I don't like to waste time when I'm 99% sure an offer won't be accepted or countered; I've written enough offers to know that (in my area, at least), an asset manager isn't going to accept anything at less than 70% of list price, unless it's been listed for more than 90 days. Even then, 65% of list is about the max discount I've ever seen a property sell for. Of course, if there are major mold/structural issues where I think the asset manager might make an exception, so will I, but these are pretty rare.

2. We have a pretty good relationship with the REO listing agents in our area (my wife is very good at networking). If we're interested in a property, we can generally call the listing agent and get a reasonable idea of how desperate (if at all) the seller is. This will give us an idea of where the offer needs to be, and if we don't think we can get close to that number, we won't bother.

3. We're pretty selective about our projects. Some rehabbers will take any deal that will meet their minimum profit (and I certainly respect that!), but given that we buy mostly with our own cash and don't have unlimited funds, I'd rather focus on deals that we "like," meaning houses that meet our geographic, type, size and condition parameters. These types of houses probably account for 10% of the total number of foreclosures in our area, so our pool of opportunity is relatively small.