Everyone who reads these success stories is lucky to have found a site like this to help them out. I learned most of my strategies by trial and error over the years and still don’t know them all.
But I would encourage everyone, especially new investors, to get as much education as you can afford by reading what others are doing and by finding a mentor or partner to brainstorm.
My previous success story was a foreclosure quick flip that I did last Thanksgiving. I’ve done several since then, but here is one to give you an idea of what you can do with good price and terms. This is a straight purchase deal I did in March.
I walk into every house I look at with the attitude that I really don’t want it, and my thrill comes from putting the deals together and the negotiations. I always step back when I’m done and say, “What in the heck was I thinking? I really didn’t want to buy that house.”
I normally look at 20 to 30 houses a week, and I usually have 1 out 10 offers actually get accepted. Sometimes I make more offers before I find a deal that will work, and a lot of homes, I don’t ever make an offer.
One of my partners called me because we hadn’t purchased anything together in some time, so we decided that we would spend the next four days driving to talk to Realtors and FSBOs.
After three days, I was getting a little discouraged by looking at more homes than I care to remember and making offer after offer. As luck would have it, we turned a corner late in the fourth day in a neighborhood I have worked for sometime, and there was a beautiful FSBO sign that hadn’t been there just two days ago.
We called the owner and made an appointment to see the home. It was only a two-bedroom and had been vacant for five years. It looked liked momma had hit it with the ugly stick from the 1970s. The owner had never rented it and had originally purchased it for family to stay in during the holidays, etc.
The asking price, $25,000, way too high for the updating that needed to be done. However, we promised the owner that we would call back the next day after running the numbers on the home and let him know what we would be willing to do and if we were truly interested.
After some discussion we decided that we could live with the home and make it a decent rental if we could buy it for no more than $13,500. The next day while driving around, we decided to call the owner and make him our top offer. At this point, I have to confess that I still really didn’t want to buy this home.
But I called the owner and in the course of telling the owner how we really weren’t interested and how it really didn’t fit our criteria, I told him that we would be willing to purchase the home for $8,000. (At that moment, my partner punched me in the arm while I was driving.)
But the next thing I heard the owner say was okay, that he would be will to take our $8,000, and then I almost had a wreck because of the shock of his answer. At this point I did have to pull over to side of the road.
I could have kicked myself for ever offering him $8,000, and to this day I still think I should have offered him even less. But in the end, we “noted” the home for 14 years to a young couple for 12% interest at $28,000.
And that is a great return–better than any bank is ever going to pay us for our money. The amount of work we did to the home was zero. My advise to you is every deal can be a good deal if the price and terms are right.