I had a home owner call me and they wanted to sell their home because they were behind on payments. They had tried to sell the property but there was a roblem with title. The property was titled to two people and the lady that owned the property had bought the property with her boyfried and he had passed away five years go. The property had to go through probate in order for the sale to take place.
I offered to pay for the probate and the lady agreed, but I told her that the heirs may want to sell the property through a realtor and in that case I would not be able to purchase the property at the price we had agreed. Once the two heirs found out they did exactly that they told me that they would get their own lawyer to do the probate.
I thought that the deal was lost, but I called them about 2 months into the process and I sent them pictures and sent them an estimate of what it would cost them to fix the property to sell at the retail price which was about $55k if they got a GC. After they got the bill of $3,500 for the probate from their attorney, they changed their mind and told me that they would sell it to me for the cash offer I made. My cash offer was at 45% of market value. My offer was based on what is happening here in South Florida, the prices have dropped in some areas as much as 20%. The area where the house is had comparable sales of $220K to $240k. I had the property under contract for $95k and I sold the property through an assignment at $115k and made 25k.
It took about 3 months for the probate case to be finalized including the approval from a judge. My total investment was $10.00 which was my deposit which I got back when we closed. The home owner owed $55K so they split $40k minus their closing costs. I made more money because they saw how much they would have to invest to sell this property and I was the only buyer willing to help them with this property that needed a lot of work. Everyone was happy.
And they say that you cannot make money in a buyers market.
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