All Forum Posts by: Doug Pretorius

@Kim Durst 4.5-5% is a good deal, how much are they asking down? Unmotivated sellers usually demand 10% interest with 10-20% down. Can you do better? Of course. But the seller has to be extremely motivated.

@Paul Bowers I do all of my prospecting by phone so mine wouldn't do you much good, it would be faster for you to start from scratch.

@Dean H. THERE YOU ARE! I've been trying to reach you regarding one of your properties... ;)

Seems like a sign of another market peak, everybody and their grandma is trying to buy, buy, buy. Which means you probably should be selling so you can buy those houses back later for half the price.

@Demarko Lee Ask them how much they think the house is worth, then ask how much they're willing to let it go for. If they say they just want to get what they owe, ask how much they owe and for the details on their mortgage (payments, interest rate, amortization etc.) If they say "make me an offer", offer them $1.

If at all possible, you want them to tell you what they want instead of you telling them what you want. Try to keep this key point in mind...THEY are the seller. YOU are the buyer. It's their job to sell you on why you should buy their house!

@Paul Bowers I'm a cheapskate so I like to use Google Sheets for tracking leads. A CRM would probably be a better idea, but I've never found one I liked.

@Zack Kahl When you click on a listing on zoocasa, scroll down and you'll see sales of similar homes in the area, how much they listed for, how much they sold for, and how long ago the sale happened.

Zoocasa seems pretty good, except their expired listings data is totally wrong. Many houses listed as expired in my neighborhood, I know for a fact actually sold.

@Jonathan Liu No problem. Good luck!

@Jonathan Liu That depends on how much it would cost to buy the tenant out, or how much rent you'd be losing by leaving them there. As a very general rule of thumb you don't want to be paying more than 75% - repairs of market value for investment properties. That would normally allow you to immediately resell if you had to and at least break even.

@Jonathan Liu That's not a substantial discount. That's full market value when you take costs into account.

@Anne Williams As you've already been encouraged to do, even though this is not an investment property per se, it is still a large investment for you and you should try to get a good deal not just overpay because your agent tells you to.

Appraisals are not the subjective 3rd-party valuation your agent is pretending they are. Appraisals are done by people not computers, and those people do not want to gain the reputation of killing deals by coming in too low.

It sounds like you have already done your own research and determined what you believe to be the property's true value. Make your offer based on that. Not the false hope held out by someone who's making money off of you.