Egads!! Fingers crossed.
CB - Can’t wait to hear about this house!
He thinks the chicken house escrow is going to close and I won’t have a chance to be in backup position.
I hate to say it…but I don’t trust this agent from what you have said.
I also don’t trust this agent. He doesn’t return phone calls of other forms of communication. Sorry there are some of these sketchy characters which make the field all that much more challenging.
Believe me… I had already told myself I wasn’t going to work with this guy ever again. But, nothing I can do but put a smile on my face and go out for a showing with him if he’s going to call me with something that isn’t on the market yet. Those are the kinds of deals that I need. I cannot compete against all the other vultures circling over Pt Loma right now. I do know that three of the local big boys are busy with multiple endeavors right now (including the guy that is somehow buying chicken house for $1 million and still hasn’t sold his $2.4 million flip), so a little less competition. That’s probably why he called me. I think his other regulars don’t have any bandwidth right now.
I researched carefully and he works with (either selling or buying) three large investors in the neighborhood. One of the investors is someone that I will not follow down a rat hole. He makes mistakes paying too much on the buy side and then sitting on market forever trying to sell too high.
CB - are there other areas of San Diego you are considering starting to look at besides Point Loma?
keeping my fingers crossed for the frat house or the chicken house!
Flip # 7
I don’t think I’m going to get the frat house. But, for kicks I took a bunch of photos of the lovely specimen. They are loaded into the #6 Flickr photo group for viewing.
It was not as bad as I had imagined, after years crammed with college guy renters. Kitchen was rather neat and clean. House has serious neglect by owner. Yard is overgrown with huge trees that block the view. Most of them are going to have to be taken down. Downstairs area is musty and moldy with a separate workshop (mold dungeon). Biggest issue is that there is only a strange 2 car carport on the side of the house on a very steep alley. There’s hardly any turning room into the car port. The property spans between two streets and has a steep alley on one side. But the lot is very steep and there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to build a garage. I think a garage is critical for a good resale value in the future.
Bottom line… the listing agent was putting up the For Sale sign when we arrived. He had drone photographers taking pictures of the property between multi million mansions on the street. They are asking $1,395,000. I cannot offer that price. He told us that he already had 3 offers and some were at the upper end. I went home and crunched numbers and I can only go as high as $1.1 million (without even knowing how I am going to scrounge up the cash for the purchase). The work involved is similar to the chicken house but would also have to build a garage somewhere. But, it is a larger piece of property in a more desireable location. I think they might get close to their asking, so I have to give up at this point.
Since it is now listed for sale (but with no interior pictures) I can reveal the address
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For personal reasons I cannot look for my next project too far from Point Loma right now.
Nice lot. Some nice trees–maybe you could save a few? Looks like a scrape and rebuild to me.
I’m with @Consolation…It looks like a scrape to me.
That’s probably what the other investors are going to do. It’s got mid century bones and built out of block. I can’t afford to scrape and build something brand new
Just thought I’d share this.
The listing agent of the homes on Charles and Tivoli holds constant Open Houses on all his listings. Also he sends out a ton of mailings in the Pt Loma neighborhood advertising he gets 97% of asking price on all his listings. I mention this because he is famous for listing high (probably how he convinces Sellers to select him over other agents) and then he continues to “expire” the listing and then relist at same price or new lower price. This goes on for months, but in the end…when asking price is in the realm of reality…he sells at about 98% of that last asking price. About 3-6 months later.
Anyway, back to today. This is the agent that keeps brushing me off claiming he has all kinds of owner occupant buyers for Charles and Tivoli. So I decided to go out to all these Open Houses and track him down. I want to meet him and convince him (have only spoken to him on the phone) that I am an viable buyer for these distressed and neglected homes. It’s pouring rain today (very unusual here) and I thought I’d have a good chance to find him alone in one of the Open Houses to have a meeting.
He has tons of flags all over the neighborhood. I get to Tivoli and flags are out, door locked, no one there. I get to Charles, flags out, door wide open and No one is hosting Open House. I go to two others (occupied with furniture) and there’s clueless college kids at the Open House who have no idea where “Robert” is. I find it so odd that I swing back to Tivoli. Now the door is open but no one is there still. Same at Charles.
I wonder if his Sellers know that Open House means absolutely wide open with no supervision on his vacant listings??
I also went to view a small cracker box on Coronado. This poor out of area agent advertised an Open House 1-4pm. But just last night she changed it to 9am to 11am with apologies that “tenants” were not cooperating.
I get there and realize that the “tenants” are in the house. Older couple in living room watching TV and grown son in kitchen making a mess. Stuff everywhere but I could tell they had made an attempt to clean the bathroom. I found an excuse to get agent out to garage.
Here is another story about a Reverse Mortgage. Grandma had a reverse mortgage on house and Son, wife and grandson living there. They do not have jobs or any savings. Grandma passed and son had no idea Mom had a reverse mortgage on house and thought they were just going to inherit it and live there forever. Mom put other brother in Chicago as Trustee. these people have nowhere to go I guess.
When you have a reverse mortgage it has to be paid off within 6 months of death or they foreclose. Luckily amount owed is not more than house is worth but they are 4 months into their time period.
Anyway, I asked the agent to call me so we can discuss what terms would be most favorable for the heirs. House is listed low so they might get a frenzy of offers. But it definitely doesn’t show well, so probably only offers from other investors. It’s not in the sexy area of Pt Loma so I might get lucky
Hey, what do you mean, not sexy area? 
:))
Open houses, indeed! Eek.
Wow, @coralbrook, I’d try to have as little to do with sketchy agent as possible. The Reverse Mortgage situation is very sad but if it’s not you, it will be the bank or other investor. I hope things work out for you on that property. At least the agent sounds less sketchy than Mr. Elusive.
That’s horrible about the non-Open Houses. The guy is basically scamming his sellers, and any serious buyer who goes to look at the houses (as you did) isn’t going to go to all the trouble of finding the agent to get inside.
Too bad about this other family, but thankfully it’s not your problem. If you are interested in the property, you’ll make a reasonable offer and they’ll either deal with you or not.
cb, is this a property you might be interested in? Or have you eliminated it?
Reverse mortgage: what a sad situation. I hope something is worked out before they are foreclosed on. 
Open houses with no one there: what a sleaze.