NUTS & BOLTS
3 WAYS TO WIN A SELLER
Review the case study of our very first deal to get a crys- tal-clear glimpse into three lessons we learned the hard way.
to $280,000 just to gauge each investor’s appetite for the home at specific price points. To our collective surprise, the house was a “screaming deal” at $265,000. When we tried to contact Betty to make a better offer, she was already signing a contract with the home investor franchise. Lesson Learned: Real estate investment is a cutthroat business and investors who know the market area will always have the upper hand in finding opportunities and securing deals. Check with multiple sources to verify that the information you believe to be true is actually correct. LESSON 2 FIRST TO DEAL, WINS While we were the first to contact Betty, we lost to the home investor because I did not have enough data already on hand. I was unable to haggle or meet the demands of the home seller because I did not have a broad enough frame of reference. Bet- ty’s asking price was only enough for her to purchase her new home, and not for profit, so she should have been an easy seller
CASE STUDY: BETTY’S “BETTER” OFFER
LESSON 1 TRUST, BUT VERIFY My very first investment lead was an elderly lady named Betty. She wanted to sell her home, pay off her reverse mortgage, and move to a smaller house. To do that, she needed $220,000. Corey reached out to a national home investor franchise to ask about exit strategy prices for properties in Garden Oaks. The franchise representative insisted that they would not be able to offer more than $220,000 for the property. We wanted to help and at least make a relatively small profit, however, so acting on that single rep- resentative’s information alone, we made Betty an offer for $218,000. She adamantly declined. Not long after, the home investor we con- tacted swooped in and closed the deal at $225,000, and he paid her moving expenses as well! We had basically been his unwitting “wing men” to make his offer look more appealing to Betty. Here is our mistake: we neglected to verify and compare infor- mation frommultiple sources. The next day, Corey called around to several local Houston investors to see if he could find a buyer who would take the house for more than $220,000. He acted as if we had the home under contract for different prices from $225,000
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AdamWinters is the founder of Sell My House Fast Houston Offer Climb, with locations in Houston and Phoenix, and is an ex-serviceman. You can also visit his website www.offerclimbhouston.com or send him an e-mail to info@offerclimb.com.
Betty’s Better Offer: Case Study Secrets to “Winning” a Home Seller A PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF LEARNING TO WORK PRODUCTIVELY WITH SELLERS.
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by AdamWinters
I
n mid-2016 my educational coaching and mentoring business had been in existence for just under five years. At first, my team and I were seeing growth every year, but around the beginning of the fourth year, we started to plateau. By the end of the fourth year, we were declining. It was becom- ing very apparent that the pool of interested people we’d been able to cultivate was stagnating. Undoubtedly, one of the trickiest things a real estate inves- tor must master is the art of winning over a home seller. Both parties want to win, but a win-win situation isn’t always easy to achieve when you are working with an individual who is mo- tivated by some external pressure to sell rather than their own personal preferences. Embrace the difficulty; fail to do so and you will soon learn that lesson the hard way. In 2015, I was just beginning my post-military career with a major home builder in Houston after serving a six-year career in
the army. Around the same time, my old buddy Corey contacted me to catch up and, in the process, introduce me to the world of professional real estate investing. Houston was experiencing a major housing boom due to the steady climb of oil prices and rise of urban development, and this was the perfect opportunity for us. At least, it was the perfect opportunity once I got out of my own way when I was working with sellers! I remember losing a potential $35,000 profit over a $2,000 negotiation difference during my very first negotiation. That stung me, but I didn’t let my first failure affect us permanent- ly. I did not give up, and neither did Corey, now my business partner. Instead, Corey and I learned from our experiences. Since that time, we’ve done a lot more deals (more than $3 million’s worth), both residential and commercial. At the end of the day, our success hinges on our ability to work with sellers productively.
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