All Forum Posts by: Dustin S

Sharon - I'm mailing to absentee owners.

Dev - my buying strategies now are to buy cash, fix and flip, or wholesale. My end buyers can pay up to 85% of ARV so I'm able to make some pretty high offers. I've tried using other methods but sellers just don't respond to those offers. They all just want cash and they want it now. I feel my ability to gain trust and negotiate is ok. I follow up with all the sellers I speak to and they're not selling to other investors. 90% of the people I speak with aren't serious sellers and just want to see what I could offer. The rest usually end up listing their properties. Can you recommend any training for dealing with seller calls?

Paul, I guess if I'm missing it then I don't know. All I can tell you is they're not selling to any other investors. They either hang on to the property or list it.

Hi,

For those that do a lot of deals through direct mail, I'm interested to know how many sellers you generally have to speak to to get a deal. I've been sending out direct mail for a couple years now and never had to speak to more than 30-40 sellers to put a deal together. Recently I've probably spoken to over 100 sellers and I can't seem to get anything.

Rick, I'll definitely keep you in mind. I actually bought your probate course a few years ago and you were the first person I thought of if I did decide to bring in an expert to help close this.

K. Marie, I saw the original grand deed and it shows the Joint Tenancy right on it. Regarding not showing up to court, he claims he was never served. At this point the seller is working with an attorney to clear up the title issue and he still seems committed to selling to us when that's resolved so we're just going to have to wait and see.

I heard a clever idea from an investor one time. Get some bright orange door hanger-type flyers made and hire someone to flyer a neighborhood. Then drive that neighborhood a week later. The houses that still have the door hangers outside are probably vacant.

K. Marie, good point about being remarried. I don't know. I do know she had a son and he's the one who initiated things to try to get a piece of the property. She died intestate. I love the idea of buying fractional interest with very little down and a balloon payment. And I agree, if I were to do that I would need a massive discount.

When we were originally speaking with the seller I checked the title and he was the only one on title so I thought we were dealing with a seller who had 100% authority to sell. It's only today that the title company told us about these issues.

As it stands the seller is going to speak with an attorney to see if he can get the title issues cleaned up. Otherwise if it has to go through probate I'll probably have to kiss this deal good-bye.

Hi!

My partner and I opened escrow on a property with a seller who was contacted through my partner's direct mail campaign. ARV is $400K, 10K in repairs, purchase price is $285K. We were told by the seller that he and his ex-wife owned the property as Joint Tenants. The ex-wife died a few years ago. As I understand as joint tenants, when one owner dies her interest is transferred to the surviving owner. An affidavit was filed giving the seller 100% ownership of the property.

Here's where it gets messy, title found a judgement that states "the recorded affidavit of death of joint tenant recorded on (date) is vacated. The subject real property is awarded to the decedent, and to her ongoing estate, and to the respondent as to one-half as tenants-in-common." According to the judgment the seller didn't even show up to court. Seller claims he doesn't know anything about it.

So where we stand now it looks like the property will now have to be probated. There is one surviving heir and when he gets wind that the seller is selling us a 400K house for 285 he's probably going to want to shop for a better deal.

I'd love to hear some ideas. On thought I had was to try to buy the sellers interest in the property at a deep discount.

-Dustin