Cash Flow With Joe

Make An Offer!

by | May 23, 2016 | Flips | 0 comments

Make an offer!

 

Pete Fortunato tells a great story about an offer he made. He looked at the house, ran the numbers and gave the homeowner a written offer at a price he could afford.

 

The homeowner reviewed it and said, “I can’t believe you would make me an offer like this. It just offends me.”

 

Pete’s response is what’s so epic. He asked the guy if the house had indeed been on the market for a month and if the owner had had many showings. The seller responded “Yes” to both questions.

 

Then Pete said, “When I have a house on market, and someone makes me an offer, that doesn’t offend me. That means someone likes my house enough to make me an offer. What should offend you is that all those people have been through your house and didn’t like it enough to even make you an offer.”

 

Pete got the house.

 

Let me tell you, I am currently offended that no one “likes my house enough” to make an offer.

 

We have a beautiful brick ranch for sale at 159 Moores Ferry Road in Plainville. It’s a roomy 2,000 square feet with three bedrooms and three full bathrooms. It has hand-scrapped hardwoods, frieze carpet and tile throughout.

 

 

It has a two-car garage, a spacious kitchen and a large back deck, as well as a covered front porch. It has a brand-new metal roof, a 36 by 40 foot pole barn and a brand-new four ton heat pump.

 

From jetted tubs to its’ surrounding eight acres, this house has everything- everything except an offer that is. We have had this thing listed for six months now. Six Months! We’ve never had a flip go that long.

 

I can’t figure it out. I’ll even tell you what the drawbacks are. The rail road crosses Moores Ferry three houses up from this property. There’s not much we can do about that other than drop the price- which we have.

 

Before we got started, we had the house appraised for $179,900. Currently we’ve dropped the price to $149,900. That means this house has $30,000 in equity from the get go. Actually it’s probably more. That appraisal was done six months ago and houses have gone up in value this year.

 

Back to the drawbacks; the house is also very close to the neighbor’s property line. This house sat vacant for a few years. During the vacancy, some goofball drove through and rutted up the neighbor’s yard to get to our house to steal copper; hence the new A/C unit. To prevent any more of that, the neighbor set posts at the property line intending to build a fence.

 

So there’s a fence really close to the house, and makes the yard look smaller. That being said, the neighbor would really like to do some horse trading. His house sits at the back of his property. Our house sits at the front. He would like to lengthen the front side of his yard using some of the back portion of our property and vice versa. The trade would thus increase the front and side yard of our house.

 

When you see a house for sale, go and talk to the people. Ask them Pete’s famous question: “Why are you selling such a nice house as this.” Before you leave, make them a written offer that works for you. If having an offer offends them, they’re not ready to sell their house.

 

I would welcome any offer on this house. That doesn’t means we can accept any offer, but it does mean Wayne-make-offerwe can start negotiating toward something mutually beneficial.

 

Remember, negotiations are where deals are created. Get out there and make some offers, and if you know someone that is interested in a big house with acreage and equity, have them give me a call: 678-986-6813.

 

Joe and Ashley English invest in real estate in Northwest Georgia. For more information or to ask a question, go to www.cashflowwithjoe.com

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