Grandaddy wants to buy your house
But he doesn't know where it is until you call!
Grandaddy and Memaw got into buying houses by accident twenty years ago and they were in a real bind. They were working on the east coast of Florida and had bought a home in Boca Raton. When they bought no one told them there was a plan to build a garbage-burning incinerator a mile from their home. But when they decided to move home to Pinellas county they knew about the proposed plant. They told prospective buyers about this risk. And, no one would buy their home.
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We Rent and Rent to Own Homes Using The
We Rent and Rent to Own Homes Using The
Famous Rent to Own on Steroids Program (tm)
They left the home in the hands of a Realtor and moved to Palm Harbor to start a new business. Like many of you, they were paying on two houses. You know what that is like. One day the Realtor called and had a buyer. Well, they were thrilled. BUT, the Realtor said they had to carry the mortgage. They didn't know what that meant and I think they are pretty smart. But, back then they didn't know about real estate. The Realtor told them, they would pay on their mortgage and the new buyer would pay on a new mortgage to them. They would have the house sold and would have a few dollars a month coming in instead of a lot of dollars a month going out. It sounded scarry and they didn't like it, didn't really understand it, but they were desperatae and they did it.
WOW. Did that open their eyes. The young couple buying our house were both managers for a well known department store. They had great jobs, they were good people who had had a fairly serious ding on their credit report for a reason that could happen to any one. Because of that they could not get a loan from a bank. They needed Memaw and Granddaddy so ;they could have a home and Memaw and grandaddy needed them to make the mortgage payment.
Memaw was Cool, But What Did Grandaddy Think?
Memaw was kind of cool with it, but Grandaddy was filled with "what ifs." What if they don't pay? What if they tear up the house? If they don't pay, how do we get the house back?
Well, they learned thata everything that can go wrong will, but just not that often. The world is filled with good people that have had a bad thng happen to them. The banks and most every one else will not help. They learned first hand that there are buyers and sellers of houses who need to sell and buy NOW and can't get it done alone. They also learned you can make moneyh by helping these people who are in a situation like they were in.
Memaw and Grandaddy have gone through a lot of training since then learning about how to help people in real estate. They are both licensed Realtors and Grandaddy is a broker. They have their own brokerage company but mostly they they buy and sell houses for themselves from peopele who need to sell quickly and get on with their lives and sell to good people who have had something bad happen and who the banks don't care about.
They left the home in the hands of a Realtor and moved to Palm Harbor to start a new business. Like many of you, they were paying on two houses. You know what that is like. One day the Realtor called and had a buyer. Well, they were thrilled. BUT, the Realtor said they had to carry the mortgage. They didn't know what that meant and I think they are pretty smart. But, back then they didn't know about real estate. The Realtor told them, they would pay on their mortgage and the new buyer would pay on a new mortgage to them. They would have the house sold and would have a few dollars a month coming in instead of a lot of dollars a month going out. It sounded scarry and they didn't like it, didn't really understand it, but they were desperatae and they did it.
WOW. Did that open their eyes. The young couple buying our house were both managers for a well known department store. They had great jobs, they were good people who had had a fairly serious ding on their credit report for a reason that could happen to any one. Because of that they could not get a loan from a bank. They needed Memaw and Granddaddy so ;they could have a home and Memaw and grandaddy needed them to make the mortgage payment.
Memaw was Cool, But What Did Grandaddy Think?
Memaw was kind of cool with it, but Grandaddy was filled with "what ifs." What if they don't pay? What if they tear up the house? If they don't pay, how do we get the house back?
Well, they learned thata everything that can go wrong will, but just not that often. The world is filled with good people that have had a bad thng happen to them. The banks and most every one else will not help. They learned first hand that there are buyers and sellers of houses who need to sell and buy NOW and can't get it done alone. They also learned you can make moneyh by helping these people who are in a situation like they were in.
Memaw and Grandaddy have gone through a lot of training since then learning about how to help people in real estate. They are both licensed Realtors and Grandaddy is a broker. They have their own brokerage company but mostly they they buy and sell houses for themselves from peopele who need to sell quickly and get on with their lives and sell to good people who have had something bad happen and who the banks don't care about.
Call Memaw and Grandaddy to Sell Your House Fast
Maybe they can help you too. If you need to buy or sell and the bank says, NO, call George and Maryan Beardsley at 727 734 2042 or email us at george@1gr8deal.com. You can call them Grandaddy and Memaw, I do.
Articles on Selling Your House
How to Sell Your House Fast, When No One Else Can
I have put together Seven Secrets for selling (or renting for that matter) a house when no one else can and this secret is called, “Make Your House Sell Fast by Making it Easy to Buy.”
(Normal disclaimer, this is not legal, accounting, financial planning advice and you should contact a board certified real estate attorney to be sure the laws in your state allow what you are going to do and to see that you are doing it correctly. All real estate closings should be done by an attorney or licensed closing agency and check out the person you are dealing with.)
Of course the first thing that comes to mind is to lower the price of the house so that it is priced lower than the homes nearby that are similar and have sold in the last six months. This probably will not be a pleasant experience since roughly half of the houses that sell in my area are bank owned properties selling at very low prices. The property appraiser in my county now uses these sale prices to determine appraised value under certain circumstances.
I “discovered” what I consider a better way to accomplish the same end-- kicking and screaming—nearly a quarter of a century ago and have been using the technique ever since. At the time Maryan and I were stock brokers in Boca Raton and were looking to move back to Pinellas County to start a stock brokerage business. Problem was we had a house to sell.
Not only was the market bad back then, but the house we owned was one mile away from where they were planning to build a garbage burning incinerator(which we did not know about when we bought the home). Fears of disease from the smoke coupled with the bad housing market had driven sales in our subdivision to near zero.
We knew nothing about real estate. We could not sell it ourselves and turned it over to a real estate agent and moved to Palm Harbor, now owning two homes. Maybe you can relate to that?
A few months after making two sets of payments, the agent called to say they had a buyer with almost no money to put down and could not get a loan. Would we finance?
Knowing nothing about real estate, we were pretty negative. “What if they don’t pay?” “What if they destroy the house?” “What if they leave in the middle of the night?”
I don’t really remember how many “What Ifs” we came up with. And then the real estate agent said, “you need to be able to compare the bad things that are really happening (two sets of payments, two sets of taxes and insurance, bad things happen to vacant houses, you are six hours away, two lawn services, etc.) with the “bad things” that might or might not happen.”
We sold the house. We didn’t have the skills or knowledge to rent it out at that time. Normal closing. Seller signed a mortgage and note to us and started making payments and paying all of the local costs. We went from negative cash flow to a nice positive and everything was fine for a few months.
Then . . . . . . A check bounced. I was frantic, panicky and had no idea what to do. So we went to a lawyer. I didn’t know I should have a real estate lawyer. A lawyer is a lawyer, I thought. He wrote a letter to the new home owner and said “pay.”
The letter was a little longer than that, but not much. They paid. He charged me $75 for the letter. And I started thinking, “I bet I could have written the letter and saved $75.”
About a year later they refinanced and we got all of our money. We had sold at top dollar, but more importantly we had sold a house when no one else was selling at top dollar, because we had made it easy for someone to buy.
Frankly, I really didn’t “get it” at the time and continued being a securities broker for a couple of years before going into real estate.
If my stock and bond customer had bought a stock for $30 a share and the stock is now $15 a share (a 50 per cent decline, much like the decline in real estate values over the last few years) there is nothing he can do to sell at $30 a share. But in real estate you can come close to doing exactly that.
Lets say you bought a house five years ago for $60,000 and today it is worth $30,000. You live in Buffalo and maybe use the house two weeks a year and pay all the expenses 52 weeks a year.
1. You could rent and wait it out. And that is what I am doing now. And I am told that if you are not temperamentally suited to be a long distance landlord, you probably should not be one, or should learn Transcendental Meditation to maintain your health.
2. You can list it with a real estate agent at $60,000 and hope one of those dumb rich people buy it. Have to be a rich person, because anyone getting a mortgage (if anyone can) will have to have the house appraise for twice its value. Not going to happen today!
3. Sell it for $50,000 to a landlord with seller financing.
4. List it at $30,000, sell for $27,000 and net about $24,500 cash now.
I think it is pretty amazing to compare option 3 with option 4 in terms of a Win Win situation.
Option 3 might look like this. Landlord buys for $50,000 no cash down, pays all closing costs and
pays the seller $278.00 a month for 15 years, realizing 50,000 cash, no further expense for taxes, renovation, vacancy, insurance.
Landlord pays $278 plus taxes, insurance, etc. and rents for $600 a month, or about $6,000 a year in gross income a year after vacancies and repairs and $1,500 to $2,000 a year net after house payment, taxes and insurance. Obviously these numbers will fluctuate dramatically.
Option 4 puts $24,500 in cash in seller’s hand which she/he can put in the bank for less than 2% interest yielding about $41 a month cash into the hands of the seller, which she/he then gets to pay tax at the ordinary income rate, maybe 15 per cent a year, or $34.85 a month.
The Big Problem, however, is the what ifs!
And, without doubt, if you sell enough houses this way all of the things you fear will happen at some time.
Fortunately, there are some things you can do. And understand that no matter how careful you are some bad things will happen. Fortunately most of them are fixable a lot easier than you anticipate.
This may be my prejudice, but I would want to sell to someone with a track record that I could verify. And I would do it this way.
First, check the public records in the area where the house is located and see if the person buying my house owns other houses and has done so for a long period of time. Many landlords enter the business by accident or without knowing how stressful it is and are delighted when they sell their final rental house.
Look for someone who has owns housing and has rented it for years.
Then look in the records of the county civil and circuit courts to see if this person has failed to pay other people in the past. Of course look for foreclosures and look for the early warning signs of foreclosure which is law suits against the person from banks and finance companies. Frankly if you find a land owner in this market with an unblemished record of making payments, I would think that was an awfully good person to trust.
Part of the reason this works for buyer and seller is eliminating the banks form the equation. If the Landlord got a bank loan and paid the seller cash, the seller would still be getting paid lunch money each month and the Landlords would not be profitable because the banks charges a lot more for money than they pay for it. Also interest payments from the bank is taxable, reducing your net monthly income. ---George Beardsley
1. Series on How to Sell Your House to the We Buy Houses Guys--Safely
How to Sell Your House Fast to the “We Buy Houses” Guys, Safely (First in a Series)
By George Beardsley
The signs have been around for probably three decades, but like everything else, you only see the things that are of immediate importance to you. While anyone can buy and sell houses in the United States most people only buy and sell the house they live in or expect to live in.
Buying houses without the expectation of living in them—as a business, really started to take off about 30 years ago when a number of seminar speakers crossed the county selling training in buying and selling homes for profit.
Like any business, you can expect a number of the people who buy houses to be skilled, honest professionals and others not so skilled and some—that you would want to avoid.
The bottom line is that some of these people can in fact help you sell a house quickly, sometimes in a few days, and solve problems. Others, I have found, will not even answer the phone or call you back, if you call and leave a message. Strange as it may seem, I have found that this reluctance to follow up on a lead happens in a number of areas in sales.
So the first thing I would suggest in selecting a House Buyer to deal with is call several, see who answers the phone, and see who comes out to your house and arrives when they agreed to arrive. Not high tech, but a good start.
Who am I to tell you how to sort through these guys? I happen to be one of them and have been doing creative real estate for two decades in Florida, was previously a stock broker and financial reporter for the Chicago Tribune. It is sort of like going to a hacker to find out how to make your computer operation safe.
And as one of them, let me assure you there are good, competent people, who are able to raise the money it takes to buy and are knowledgeable of the way real estate works where you live.
There are also, and always, waves of new people who are learning how to buy houses and some of the people who need to sell a house fast will be helping these newcomers learn the trade.
In addition to seeing if they answer the phone and actually arrive at the time agreed for an appointment, I would want to know how long the person has been buying houses and how well they do it. In the second installment of this series, we will look at methods of checking them out and in the third article we will be looking at phrases in the contract they offer you that you may want to avoid.
One of the biggest plusses that the best of these guys and gals will bring to the table to help you is that they have been taught that there are a number of ways to sell a house, methods that have been used in commercial real estate for years but that are rarely used in residential real estate.
I learned the use of these creative methods the hard way twenty some years ago when I lived on the East Coast of Florida and unbeknownst to me had bought a house in an area where a garbage burning incinerator was planned. It was to be built about a mile from where my house was and when I was ready to sell the house to move to the Tampa Bay area, I could not sell.
Everyone knew of the plans when I was ready to sell and no one wanted any of the houses in my area. I finally left the house with a real estate agent and moved while bearing the cost of two homes.
While a lot of real estate agents do not like creative real estate, my agent was knowledgeable and suggested a way to sell my house. We were scarred, but after thinking about it we sold and it worked out fine.
There was a risk in what I did then and a risk in any creative answer to a real estate sales problem, but my experience was what eventually sent me into the We Buy Houses business and in the next several articles we will tell you how it may help you and discuss the risks.
Don’t You Dare Sell Your House Fast to that Professional
Until You Check Him Out (Second in a Series)
By George Beardsley
Imploding housing prices coupled to a mortgage mess are propelling more people to consider selling their houses to the professional home buyers whose advertisements you now see everywhere you look.
While they promise a fast sale and you can get on with your life, you’ve got to be asking just how safe it this?
In the first article in this series we suggested that for a minimum, find out if they return phone calls and actually show up for the appointment on time. If they can’t do something that simple, figure they will screw up buying your house as well. But there is more.
And four simple searches on google.com will tell you a lot more about whether you want to deal with this guy (or gal) or not.
First, just do a simple Google search of the person’s name with some geographic limiters, such as “‘George Beardsley’ Pasco house.” We suggest you put the name of the home buyer in quotes to reduce the number of responses about other people. In addition to the location (Pasco County) we also added the word house to further limit the search.
This will give you an idea of how active the person is, at least on the internet, the type of business they are doing and maybe complaints or compliments from other viewers.
Next Google the local newspaper, visit the archives and search for the person’s name. You may find a host of both positive and negative items that will help you decide if you want to deal with him or her.
Now Google the name of the county and the words clerk of court and you will find two areas where you can really mine for the pay dirt.
“Public records” will contain a list of all the properties bought and sold in the county. Although many investors use corporations and trusts to hide their ownership of property you will probably find numerous entries under the Professional Home U Buyer’s name. Look for the earlier entries to get some idea of how long they have been buying houses. The longer they have been at it, the more likely they are to be able to actually help.
This is not to say that a brand new person will not be of help, but it is comforting to know that the person who is looking to buy your house has done it before and hopefully for years and years.
Now go to the county records for the civil court and see how often the person has been the defendant in a law suit. Zero would be a good number, but in this climate of civil law suits most anyone who has been in business for any length of time may have been the defendant at one time or another. You do not want to see a pattern of being sued and you will want to ask about why he was sued and the outcome if he was sued.
None of this will be conclusive. But, if you are armed with this information before the person is scheduled to arrive at your house, you can learn a lot. First, does he arrive on time? Then, is he upset that you have done your home work and checked him out? I assure you he has checked out your house and a real pro will expect you to have done your home work as well. Can he answer all the questions you have as a result of your research and does he have a good explanation for all of the information you bombard him with? If so, then you want to go to the next step and check out his contract terms, which we discuss in the next installment.
Sell Your House Fast Cash to Professional Home Buyer? You Better Check the fine print! (Third in a Series)
By George Beardsley
Selling your house fast in this market is a real accomplishment and sometimes those guys with the signs that say “we buy houses” that you now see everywhere can give you the help you need.
So far in this series I have confessed that I am one of those guys and have been for two decades and have offered some suggestions on how to see if you are dealing with someone dependable. That’s a good start and you need more.
Even if the guy or gal you are looking to sell your house to shows up on time, has a long record of buying houses and has never been on the wrong end of a law suit, you need to make sure the contract details are what you think they are.
Lots of our advertisements say “Real People who Really Buy Houses.” What that is getting at is that some of the folks that say they want to buy your house, don’t really “buy” houses.
Doesn’t make them a bad person and you may want to do it their way, but I think it only fair, that you understand the way this works. Think “contingency.” And contingency may well be a four letter word.
Here is how it works in some cases. Guy or gal says want to buy your house and the both of you sign a contract. Somewhere in the contract is a contingency that says, basically: You have to sell and I will buy if I want to. Most often that means that they have found someone to buy your house even before they close on it and they make a small profit.
Or, they do not find someone to buy your house before they close the transaction and they come back to you and say:
“My partner did not approve the deal, so I can’t buy.” I even met one person once who bragged that there was a clause in the contract that said his “dog” had to approve the sale.
“Little Wolf” Beardsley (World’s Finest Australian Shepherd) never appeared in any of our contracts and even if he had, he never met a house he didn’t want to buy.
Now, in all fairness, there is nothing wrong with this arrangement. If the person who is “buying” your house is skilled in marketing, knows the local market inside and out and can sell your house for more money and faster than you can, they ought to be paid.
Real estate agents (and I am one) get paid for selling houses and they most often have no risk. They simply sell the house and get a commission if it sells and if it does not, they are out advertising costs. Your home buyer may close on the house even if he/she cannot sell it as fast as they hoped, and in this market –that is a risk.
My only reservation is this. If the person “buying” your house plans to “flip” it like a pancake, you should know that this is what is happening. If they fail to sell it and turn it back to you because their dog, partner, wife, or hairdresser did not approve of the deal, you should have known that up front.
Again, there are circumstances where what you need is extra marketing and expertise and getting the house sold is really what you want. You do not care who is going to be living there.
So, I would simply ask this question of the professional home buyer. “Are you really buying and will you close the deal on the date on the contract? Or, are you looking to make a quick flip and –never own the house?
There are some contingencies that are standard in all contracts. You should expect an inspection of the house and a pest control inspection. They should be done within a certain number of days. You may expect a contingency for financing and you will have to provide a marketable title to the house.
Expect title problems. Things that you did not know about. Maybe even things that involved the previous owner or the owner before that. It happens. A lot.
I bought a house once from man who had forgotten he was married and didn’t know where the wife was. In my state they both have to sign. When we asked, he said he thought she was in Iowa. The sale was delayed until the fantastic title agent I work with found the wife and the still-married couple worked out an agreement for her to sign the deed.
Things will happen and some sales will not close for reasons unforeseen. But, before you sign the contract, I suggest you find out what your buyer plans to do with the house after your signature is added to the contract.
In the next installment, we’ll give you some tips on how you can cut out the middle men—like me—and sell it on your own.
Sell Your House Fast Yourself, Cut Out the We Buy Houses Guys, Like Me! (Fourth Confession in a Series)
By George Beardsley
If you really need to sell a house fast, especially now, it may look as difficult as brain surgery or winning the lottery. Actually it is as simple as four little letters, A. I. D. A., and you can do it yourself. You can, but you may not want to. Let’s see!
A.I.D.A. is a staple of the advertising industry and it tells how to sell everything from executive jets to flats to let. It means Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.
Attention, and the first thing you must do to sell your house fast yourself it to get the attention of someone who can be interested in buying your house and has the ability to make the purchase.
Frankly that is easy today and cheap. Craigslist will put your house that is for sale in front of a gazillion people, many of which have the means to make the purchase and the cost of the ad is your time to put the listing on the site. If you are scared of the technology involved in using Craigslist, simply look at how many people are doing it who don't have a master’s degree from M.I.T. It’s easy!
Still scared? Go to elance.com and hire someone in a third world country who very well may have a masters degree in electrical engineering who will post your advertisements on Craigslist and fifty other sites you never heard of and do it all for $5 an hour.
Combine that with the ultimate of high tech. Put a sign in your yard. (My wife says I have to say “just kidding” cause someone will think, I think signs are high tech) Let people know the house is for sale. Make the sign so ugly you teenage kids are ashamed of the sign and a Realtor offers to give you a pretty sign for FREE. Ugly is GOOD. It makes it look like you are motivated and are approachable.
Interest and Desire are, or can be, pretty closely related. The house, unlike the sign, should be clean, neat, uncluttered. The front yard and the front of the house—especially the front door—should be attractive and inviting. This is your first impression as someone arrives to look at the house.
If you have repair problems, you have to make a decision. To repair or not to repair. Generally, I would say do not repair and DO disclose. If you REALLY need a new roof, I would say so in the advertisement. Probably not the absolute first word in the ad. Tell them that it is a house and tell them something good about it first. Remember you do have to get their attention, FIRST.
Neat, clean, uncluttered, spot paint here and there. But do not fix things that need major repair. Unless you are one of the pros, you will probably not be able to get out of the deal the extra money you put in to do the repairs. And do not do any serious redecorating. Reason? The next guy will NOT have your taste, no matter how good your taste may be.
Know honestly what your house is worth. Check zillow.com and other websites for an idea and realize it is no more than that. Just an idea, but it is a place to start. Have a couple of Realtors come to give you a presentation and see what they think it is worth and what cheap fix up ideas they suggest. But I would not give them the exclusive right to sell the house (called a listing agreement). Sign nothing. At least not at this time.
I would look at the houses around you that are for sale. What condition are they in and what is the asking price? In order for A.I.D.A. to work, you need to be brutally aware of what you are trying to sell and what the competition has to offer.
Then, you must gently nudge the prospective buyer from being interested over to desiring your house rather than the competition using a strategy we will discuss in the next installment of Selling House Fast to the We Buy Houses Guys Safely.
Sell Your House Fast Yourself Using “911forLandlords” Strategies! (Fifth in a Series)
By George Beardsley
In the last installment we said you need to use the secret formula A.I.D. A. to sell your house fast. You also need to get the house neat and clean and find out what the competition looks like and how it is priced.
In the last installment we said you need to use the secret formula A.I.D. A. to sell your house fast. You also need to get the house neat and clean and find out what the competition looks like and how it is priced.
A.I.D.A. is a staple of the advertising industry and it tells how to sell everything from executive jets to flats to let. It means Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.
Today, we are going to add to the alphabet soup three new letters, U.S.P. I know it stands for United States Patent, but today the important phrase hiding behind the initials is Unique Selling Proposition. This is what will sweep the competition away and have you walking away with a sold sign under your arm.
If you watch television or listen to your neighbors at the gym, you probably know you cannot sell a house in the current market, much less fast. So hang with me a few minutes and let me tell you how we can be successful, even in this market.
Well. It is true that houses are not selling. Why? Do people not want a nice place to live? No! Of course not. They simply can’t come up with the cash for a down payment and the banks will not give them a mortgage and most folks do not have the cash in their pockets to buy a house.
If you can solve this problem for someone who likes your house, is able to afford the monthly payments and upkeep, you have just separated your house for sale from every other house in the neighborhood. You have created a Unique Selling Proposition. There will not be anyone else in the neighborhood offering this kind of benefit. At least for a while.
What we are suggesting to separate your house from the competition, at least in one manifestation, is a variation of a technique called a lease option, (specifically “the Famous Rent to Own on Steroids Program™) discussed in the book “911 for Landlords.”
Basically you rent your house with an option to buy. You give all of the rent paid in the first year back to the buyer to become his down payment and you give the buyer a mortgage if he/she makes 12 consecutive payments on time and maintains the house as though he/she already owns it.
Now before I go any further I need to say: If you do not understand the last two paragraphs and you plan to implement this plan, it is IMPERATIVE YOU HIRE A BOARD CERTIFIED REAL ESTATE ATTORNEY to advise you. There are a number of details that are very important and this strategy is ILLEGAL in Texas. Other states may pass a law about lease options at any time. Get professional counsel.
Isn’t it funny how I know what you are thinking? Not only might it be illegal, the people I rent to might not pay. And then, what do I do?
The answer is there may be variations that will make you more comfortable and every situating is different. You have to calculate the risk you have now and the risk you will have after doing a strategy like this.
If you think creative strategies to sell your house are somehow bad and evil, this kind of buying and selling has been going on in commercial real estate for decades, if not forever. More money is involved and often hard to get, so the people in commercial have been doing things like seller financing, lease options, sandwich leases, sell and buy back, and a whole lexicon of strategies to sell property when the banks were not able or willing to carry the full load.
And if you are watching TV and talking to the folks at the gym, you know that that is where we are today with the banks. They are not able or willing to finance all the people what want and deserve a nice home.
There are creative ways to solve this and sell your house fast. If you do want to explore the creative side, get an attorney who understands the details. Or, you just might want to call a We Buy Houses guy, like me, and or course seek legal advice. Or, be one of the first ten emails at 911forlandlords@gmail.com and get a free copy of the book,
