All Forum Posts by: Charlie MacPherson

Talk with a mortgage broker. If my memory is correct, 580 is the lowest credit score that can be approved for FHA and USDA lending.

Read your contract.  If there's no help there, I think your stuck.  You had the opportunity to inspect and took it.

Unless it was misrepresented, I think you're stuck.

I have seen many offers that were so low that the buyer really ticked off the seller - to the point where the seller said "F that guy".  No response, no counter nothing.  Just refusing to even deal with that "buyer". 

There's a difference between a reasonably low offer and one that is insulting.  Finding that line is the trick.

If the home is properly priced (as supported by the comps), -20% might be insulting, unless you accompany the offer with a legitimate reason.  That means realistic estimates of repairs and upgrades, not "I want to steal it".

As to contingencies, the more you have the weaker the offer is.  If I'm representing the seller, I'm looking for "weasel" clauses that let you tie the property up for weeks and also lets you get out with no cost to you.  I'm advising my seller against accepting that offer and keeping it on the market - unless the local market has turned and you're in a buyer's market.

Good luck!

Having an LLC, S-Corp or C-Corp provides isolation of personal assets from corporate liabilities.

In other words, if I own a convenience store under Me, LLC and someone walks into my store, trips and hits their head on a shelf, resulting in severe brain injury, the resulting lawsuit can only collect up to the assets of the store.

Let's say that the plaintiff was awarded $5M in damages.  My store has assets of $500,000 in real estate, 75,000 in inventory and $100,000 in cash and other assets.  The plaintiff can force me to liquidate all of the store's assets and turn them over to them.

What the plaintiff can NOT do is to force the sale of my $10M luxury ocean front estate. That's a personal asset (unless for some inexplicably stupid reason you sheltered it under the same LLC as the store).

There are exceptions that can be achieved by "piercing the corporate veil".  One of these (among MANY) is fraud.

The FTC appears to be alleging that these seminar operators have done just that, so they could be completely wiped out in this lawsuit.  As in bankrupt, where the court will determine what assets they are allowed to keep.

Personally, it would do my heart a lot of good to see a lot of these seminar gurus (and in my opinion, scam artists) run out of business and into bankruptcy court.

Legal Zoom has a good article on piercing the corporate veil here: https://www.legalzoom.com/arti...

Would you rather have someone representing your home who has been in the industry for decades and doesn't need your business, or someone who is young, full of fire and needs every dime he can earn?

Go get 'em!

@Ramona Huot I'm no longer a practicing Realtor, but I had a coupe of go-to inspectors.  I used them because they would prioritize me when it came to scheduling, but would do a very thorough inspection.

If an inspector glossed things over it would put my reputation at risk and that's the single most important thing you have in any business.  No one deal is worth ruining a reputation that I've worked years to build.

It depends a lot on what the repairs are.  If those are necessary to get the home to pass FHA/VA inspection, then yes.  Get them done or you'll rule out a big chunk of buyers who will use those loans.

If not, that's a value judgment that nobody else can make for you.

Tough situation.  You should never sign a contract without EMD being paid at the same time.

The three basic elements of a contract (and there are others) are 1. Offer, 2. Acceptance, 3. Consideration (something of value changes hands).

There is a legal theory that says the contract itself is a thing of value and therefore counts as consideration. That means that a court could find that you have a binding contract, even without EMD.

You can play hard ball and tell that agent that you're going to file a complaint with the state's Real Estate Commission and see if that gets you anywhere.

If, as was said above, that agent was trying to wholesale your property (not sure how to prove that), he could be in violation of a tort known as "Fraud in the Inducement", meaning that he fraudulently caused you to enter into a contract that he had neither the intent nor the ability to complete.  That's another lawsuit.

The problem is that you'll have to show damages and that's tricky.

IANAL, so maybe you should talk with one.

Will do!

Yes.  Presuming that they're not distressed, we can sell that kind of company.  In fact, we have one listed now and I think it's under contract!  Please contact me at your convenience and let's talk!