Your Best Real Estate Deal. How you did it? How much you made?

Question

Your Best Real Estate Deal. How you did it? How much you made?

http://www.forumforme.com/

Answer 1

Our best deal was one in which we helped a recently widowed lady with three young children find a new home in a new area and helped her integrate her family. We lost money on this deal and we'd gladly do it again! Real Estate is about people - not money.

Answer 2

Purchased a downtown Seattle studio condo, walking 2 blocks from pioneer peak and pikes market. Paid $55,000 for it in 1992, sold it 5 weeks later for $115,000. Sure great, but today the same condo would easily sell for $450,000! hindsight is alwasy 20/20. Still can't complain

Answer 3

some of my CM deals were fantastic !!! and i made a fortune on them, but i'll say that they were my best deals only because they were such huge properties and took the attitude, before they got closed, of not thinking of them much. in deals like that, the seller always "shops" the offer and even a signed contract! meaning he is trying to get a better deal from other agents/brokers. it takes a long time to do a big deal, it takes so long that you may as well just go about the business of the day. if manna from heaven falls on your head because theses deals close in your favor, cool.

but i must say that i keep a little book of the history of my deals, many of which weren't CM, but were residential. some of those stories are far more interesting but did not make me as much money. i just enjoyed doing them. sometimes your personal enjoyment is a means of getting "paid" anyways, dig? and so:

my favorite story, in my real estate deal history book, was residential. i had the buyers and another broker had the sellers. she had helped the sellers for years in the past, renting out their house until they signed with her to sell it.

and so, the buyers that i had knew, and i knew, and i told them that i knew, even based on reading the stats in the MLS listing sheet well before we went in, especially in reference to when this smaller house on a huge piece of land HAD BEEN BUILT, that had the correct hood and coordinates, that they should buy it, immediately. and i mean that: right away, make the best and cleanest offer you can, now!

well of course they trusted me because i never say anything that is not true. i am highly lazy, so why should i bother lying? too much work covering up lies, and so of course they trusted me.

so we wrote the offer, it was countered, as usual, in price, upwards, and they, the buyers, agreed and intialed for the price. then we went forward.

so what happens? in the midst of it all, after the home inspection, and (very important data here) AFTER both attorneys approved the legal wording of the contract (which is the only thing they can do: they cannot change the price or the dates), i get this "urgent" call from the seller's agent, who tells me that the contract is null and void! and so, i'm thinking about all the BS that has gone on in deals in my past, and i just smelled the bad, bad odor of when the sellers have aleady made a contract, they get another offer for about double the dough.

well, i'll tell ya: i will slap down ANYONE who tries to mess with my clients! that is what being an AGENT is all about, btw. and so, i put my chess hat on and wrote some pretty strong emails to the agent and to her broker, outlining that they just couldn't do this. their seller couldn't do it either. they had tried to slip this by us on the last day of attorney's approval, but little did they think, in their greed, that they already made a deal to sell, to my client! you can't just pick up after accepting a contract and after attorney's approval to make a deal with another party! and how i knew it! and how i smelled it! and how it stunk! the managing broker smelled it too, so no wonder he was a nervous wreck, later, talking to me.

well, as time went on, i got a lot of calls by a very frightened broker manager (her manager) who was shaking in his boots, because they wanted the bigger commish, but tough: they couldn't just remove a binding contract. and so i utilized my real estate chess moves, which were a whole lot of fun. (i've been playing real estate chess now since 1986. in fact, know: real estate is a big game--a major investor told me that once, and i didn't get it, i was too serious--but it really, really is. and it can be a whole lot of fun when you know what you have to do, or are doing).

so i will now state why it's my favorite real estate history lesson. i had made the chess moves in the beginning of the game that benefited MY CLIENT. i continued to make the smartest moves. because they were smart moves, i had, in effect, put them into check, and when the other, larger, offer fell into their laps, they knew it was checkmate. so did their lawyer.

there was quite a happy ending, though: the closing was scheduled for a friday, but no rooms were then available, so it got moved to the next monday. just by chance, it was my client's BIRTHDAY!!! he got a nice birthday present, the house he had longed to get for 10 years, his first house. the sellers and their broker were at the closing, and ended up being very nice. what else could they be?

this was a lot of fun, but it was mind fun. i had a gasssss.

Answer 4

I don't know if this counts but in 1992, we purchased a home for $140,000, lived there for 12 years and sold it for $460,000 and were able to buy a much larger home on 1 acre.

Answer 5

A ready built two bed room single storey south-west park facing flat measuring 112 sq.m. came my way through somebody which later on I discovered was with five property dealers of the area in Vasundhara housing scheme of UP Govt. in Ghaziabad(UP) India. They demanded initially Rs.12.5 lakhs for unregistered property and Rs.13.5 for a registered one. Smelling these scheming dealers, I left. Later on the owner of the flat contacted me through a common party and we conveniently settled for a duly registered property at Rs.10.75 lakhs which I purchased 3 months later by way of a bank loan, own savings and later on got it mortgaged, transferred in my name from the authorities. That was the bet deal of my life.

Answer 6

I'm in San Antonio, so keep in mind that margins are much smaller here. ($, not the space at the side of the page...:)

Three best deals - all HUD houses.

1 - Teacher next door. On these, Police, Teachers, Firemen and Paramedicts put their names in the hat, so to speak, to see who gets the house at half price. Some of the houses that HUD sells are on this list (about 5 to 15 per week in the entire state of Texas). My buyers (a teacher and her husband) tried on 11 houses in 10 months and won none of them! About 2 weeks after the last bid opening, HUD calls me to say the winning bidder could not get their loan - would I call my buyer and see if they still wanted the house? I didn't need to call. They wanted it! It was listed about $90K, worth about $100 and they got it for $45 plus fees rolled in ($100 out of pocket total)... I think I made about $3,600.

2 - Duplex, HUD, needed work. "The right things wrong." Listed at $55,000 each side could rent for $500 (in San Antonio's 2006 market, that's a steal) My investor buyer called me on Sunday night to put in the bid. I said OK, but that we're wasting our time. An owner occupant will undoubtedly get it (HUD gives preference to owner occupants, in the first 10 days, even if they bid less than an investor) An owner occupant could live in one side rent free and rent out the other side to almost cover the mortgage (in Texas, there's no state income tax, so property taxes are higher than many states - so 6%/30yr mtg on $55k is about $525 to $550 ish) Well, we put in a full price offer, plus I think about $100. He son the bid by about $25 and the only other bidder was also an investor! He didn't even realize what a deal he had just pulled off until I showed him MLS printouts of what rents vs mtg ought to be. I made about $1,800.

3 - The house I live in. God gave it to me. We were not looking to buy a house. When I pulled up the new HUD listings that Thursday (at that time, they came out Thursdays and bids due Sunday night) and there was a house that on paper looked pretty good - it was on the way home, so I figured I'd check it out. I walked in the front door, and knew it was ours! Each room I went to confirmed it. The original owner had ordered all the right upgrades - things that I would have. I brought the family out on Saturday, and we stayed in the house for almost an hour! On a Saturday. And not another Realtor showed up! We prayed over it and claimed it. God told me how much to bid, and we won by $102. Of course I put zero commission on it, so no money made that way, but we bought it for $95,000 (which was full list price) but it was probably worth at that moment about $115K. BTW - HUD's best deals are in the winter because there are too many buyers out in the summer - God gave us our house in the month of July.

Oops, two more.
4 - Buyer came in from the east coast. Wanted a "country-ish feel" nice trees, maybe a creek, deer, hills, about $150K...... yeah right, trees and hills in San Antonio.... we looked at what was out there and were almost ready to settle on a regular subdivision, try for a cul-de-sac for a little bit of yard, but not really the feel he wanted. I was at the computer writing up his offer when I felt led to search again (we'd been looking for 3 weeks already, so I knew we'd already seen all there was) A house had just been listed that morning. I called him up to meet me there. It was sleeting, and about 35 degrees - IN SAN ANTONIO..... Nobody goes out when weather like this hits here..... except Realtors who see a listing that is better than it ought to be. Before we left the house, there were three other Realtors waiting to get in. I think it was listed at $155. We offerred $168 about and got it. The agent told me we got it not due to the net, but because of how we wrote the offer - as a previous poster wrote, it's a bit of a chess game. We had seen enough to know that at $185 it would have been a good deal for them. Happy buyers! They had 5 offers over $165 within 10 hours of listing it.

5 - Buyer wanted particular neighborhood. House hit the market one morning and I was going to preview it. She called me that she'd just driven by a new sign, so I told her just to wait there, I had already set up my preview, so we'll just view it already. Had it under contract by 11am. They had three higher offers that afternoon. Sometimes the early bird really does get the worm....:)