@coralbrook: You need to convince the elderly woman to stop waiting on the DIL. Presumably she’s competent; it’s her damn house; and she can just sell it to whomever she wants. Having your references would reassure her that she’s not being taken advantage of and that the price you are offering is fair market value.
Technically, the woman has not told me what the address of the house is. So, I would not have any way to know how much to offer (even though I have some idea because I have seen the house). I don’t want to appear too aggressive on this.
Meanwhile, the listing agent for the small horrible house on Silvergate has contacted me to help some of his clients. There is a house located at
3761 Warner 92106
This house was sold end of October 2015 for $897k. It has a bunch of illegal additions. The buyer wanted to basically tear down and build a new house on the lot because the area is very pricey and surrounded by very expensive homes. Evidently, the cost of rebuilding was too much and now the buyer has it up for sale with a For Sale By Owner in the window of the house - nothing else. This agent got his buyers in there and they are scared of the house - it needs a ton of work. He asked me to walk through the house with them and give my opinion. They were under the impression that I was a contractor or something and I kept telling them I was just giving them my opinion, it is not the type of work I can do and I am not licensed.
The seller is trying to unload the house for $1,020,000 which I think is ridiculous. He wants to make $100,000 or more just to sit on a house for one month.
I told these people when I walked through with them that I might be interested in buying the house if they did not want it. We will see. Definitely not going to pay over $1 mil for the house that is legally only a 2/1 1175sq ft.
Interesting, but I doubt the current owner will want to sell it at less than he/she bought it for. Is it worth the $897K plus renovation costs? Not to mention getting the existing structure permitted.
Coralbrook, I hope you charged for your time.
The more I think about all the work required… and what the City is going to make someone do to get all the crazy little additions torn out/redone, I don’t think I want the house at the price he is going to have to sell it at.
(I hate the reclaimed wood look)
Online Auction Property
This is an interesting property that I am going to watch. This property showed up on the MLS with ‘no offers accepted, bid online at homesearch.com’ with a teaser MLS listing price of $799k. The property is bank-owned, but did not go to foreclosure auction. It’s a rare ‘Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure’ which means that the owners just gave the property back to the bank instead of going through a foreclosure. Banks usually will not accept a Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure unless they feel that they can get a good return selling the property on the market. There was a 2007 $742,000 1st loan on the property. Property has been in foreclosure since 2012.
3212 Goldsmith 92106
I researched the property and I could see that there was a ‘reserve’ at the online auction. Then suddenly the MLS got updated with $819k as the listing price but no opening bid set at homesearch.com. The auction completed with a high offer of $703k, but with the famous ‘Reserve Not Met’. This means that the bank will not accept the offer of $703k made through the online auction.
What usually happens after these auctions is the bank will come back to the highest offer with their ‘counter offer’ and you have to take it or leave it. In addition, the buyer has to pay a 5% premium (which really is some kind of real estate commission) to the homesearch.com entity in order to ‘win’ the bid. So, your high bid of $703k is really a bid of $738k. The auction is closed on homesearch.com and just today the property got marked ‘pending’ in the MLS.
The date of ‘agreement’ for the contract appears to be 12/28 which means that bank/high bidder have been negotiating since the auction date of 12/17 and/or they kept going down the line of bidders until someone paid the bank’s price (with extra 5%)
I will keep you updated because I find this method of selling houses kind of fascinating.
cb, were you aware of this house being up for auction before it happened?
LOL - that’s the house we tried to see last December when we first starting looking but an angry tenant claimed he wasn’t notified and wouldn’t let us in. Even though our realtor had arranged for a showing.
Yes, I was aware of it but knew that the bank had a ‘reserve’ on the auction. I’ve tried before and it never works out because the reserves are usually ridiculously high. Also, if it is anything like Auction.com, during the last 10 minutes of the auction some kind of computerized action starts up where the bank/computer just starts raising the bid every single time you put in a new offer.
And, to be honest, I forgot to go back in on Dec 17th and get into the action. Ooops
Is the angry tenant Marilyn mentioned still living there?
It does not appear that the angry tenant is still there because the photos posted by the bank’s agent show a vacant house. I could be wrong
1 Small House on Silvergate
I turned down this property last week when the Listing Agent called to let me know what $$$ it would take to purchase the property. He said they had a verbal offer at $799k. Two days after that, the property has been ‘withdrawn’ from the market. I have no idea why.
My guess is that the tenant was so uncooperative that the potential buyer could not even get into the house to do a proper home inspection. Probably going to bring it back out on the market after the tenants move out around Jan 15th
The Goldsmith property doesn’t really look like a flip to me.
I agree…other than a coat of paint everywhere…and maybe new light fixtures…what would you do to the Goldsmith house?
I would have opened it up a bit with bigger windows or something to give more natural light. There wasn’t really much room with the purchase price anyways.
Nothing much has come up for sale in the regular MLS, so I’m hitting the auctions again this week. I have about 10 properties I’m interested in but I need to be patient to see if they will get postponed or cancelled.
Meanwhile, I am gathering up some funds so that I have stronger bidding power at the auctions. First time that I will start paying interest before I own a property but I’m resigned to the fact that it is part of the business. Hope I’m not making a mistake.
cb, is it because of the holidays that things have been slow?
I think so. I was prepared to go to the auction every day (which is not an easy task, lots of homework required) only to have the property cancelled or postponed. I never even made it to an auction.
No new properties for sale.
Still waiting for phone calls from either elder lady’s daughter in law broker who is supposed to sell her house and/or the listing agent who told me about something he is going to have in early January. These are still possibilities but I have to be patient I guess.
I think the Fed might have played a role, too. It seems that everyone who was on the fence moved forward and wiped out the RE inventory everywhere to lock in the rates before they go up.
Hope your auction hunt pays off, CB! Good luck.