EBay Auction Scam

Bird Dogs, Wholesaling
1

EBay Auction Scam
I had recently completed a Lease Option Deal and had a good chunk of change that was burning a hole in my pocket. I started looking at the Real Estate for Sale on EBay. I found this great looking older home that looked freshly painted and the starting bid was only $2500, I thought, wow, I can totally buy this, do repairs and have a sweet rental free and clear. The house was in Dayton Ohio. I knew the Ohio rental market might not be as strong as California but I knew I could rent this out for $400 a month easily. I am in Central California but I thought, hey, I cud hire out any work that needed to be done.
The house had been sitting on EBay for a while with no activity. I placed a bid for $100 over the posted amount. Within a short time (almost immediately) somebody else was bidding aggressively against me. Soon the price was up to over 15K. I would make a bid and within minutes there would be a counter bid. I don’t remember exactly how high the bidding eventually got but it was approaching my cash limit.

The crazy part is, I had this overwhelming feeling that the seller was the one bidding against me.

I stopped bidding.

EBay kept sending me emails that I was about to lose out on this great deal. Nobody else was bidding. After the auction time limit expired, wouldn’t you know it, the
seller contacts me and says the winning bidder backed out and I cud have the house at my latest bid. I said I don’t want it for that price, and that’s why I stopped bidding. I told him to lower the price and I’ll write up a contract and market it all over the country and to give me 45 days. He said no, I need cash and I need to sell it right away. I told him OK, good luck.

He then asks me to pay his fee for listing it on EBay.
I was really having some bad feelings about this seller.

On a whim, I called a Realty company in Dayton and asked a realtor to check out the house. The lady realtor was from my hometown and had followed her husband to Dayton because he was a popular hometown football hero that had went big time, they were now divorced but, anyway. She went over to the house to take some photos and give me the lowdown. She described the house as being in serious disrepair, boarded up with broken windows and appeared to have homeless drug addicts living in it, and she tells me she definitely was not going inside. She didn’t even stick around long enough to take some photos.

I emailed the seller and told him about the condition and that his EBay photos of a cute house which was freshly painted and ready to rent was a complete and total misrepresentation. He said it’s been a while since he’s been to the house and he was unaware of its present condition. This whole situation made me jaded and apprehensive about EBay or any auctions.
After it was all over, I had to take a shower.
Rando

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Randoskie,

“The lady realtor was from my hometown and had followed her husband to Dayton because he was a popular hometown football hero that had went big time, they were now divorced but, anyway.”

That aside is one reason I love reading your posts.

I use google maps to spy on the out of town deals. The photos may be a couple years old, but things don’t change that fast in my experience.

I think Ebay is a great place to market deals. There’s an urgency, especially if the price is obviously a screaming deal.

What I’ve found is that the bidding climbs the last day, or so, and few people bid early. Not every case involves a shill of a seller.

BTW, even on Ebay, the buyer doesn’t have to buy, but the seller has to sell. So, if you discover the house isn’t what you expected, you can explain why you’re backing out. It’s not like you put up $5k as an earnest/binder deposit.

Tell me I’m wrong here.

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Wow. Thanks for sharing this, Rando. I don’t really bid on those sites but I’m sure this
will enlighten a lot of people.

Smh.

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I had a similar incident from Ebay where there seller listed a lot in a small town I own properties in. It was a single lot about two blocks from one of my properties. I checked the plot and it was correct. The owner said that utilities were near, water, electric and sewer were two blocks away through a swamp. I submitted questions to the seller and they were never answered.

As a general rule write your contract pending a physical inspection and if they ask for cash up front don’t send it. I have seen some good legit properties sell as well. Proceed with caution!

randyscott

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I talked to a lady investor that had purchased a Mobile on some acreage. She even went to inspect the property b4 she bid on it. It was an online auction and she got it for 30K. She tells me after she bought it she finds out the previous owner had never hooked up a city water line and she found out it would cost thousands. It seems the ex owner had a sister living on the next parcel and she ran a garden hose over to her property. She described how she had diligently looked over the property and how gorgeous the Mobile home was and how beautiful the lot was…
She was really angry and saying she was going to the local TV station to expose the Auction company.
I checked out the property and it was a gorgeous newer double wide on a few acres of prime land that cud be worth 80K
I offered to buy it from her for what she paid, but she wouldn’t have it, so intent on getting back at this auction house.
She actually seemed more angry that I offered to buy it. I never heard what happened.

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I’d buy those all day, if I could. This woman’s a dimwit, if not greedy.

You’ll never hear from her. After she spends the $20K to hook up the water, or put in a well, of course, she’ll have doubled her money in the time it takes to turn on the faucet.

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Hey Rando thanks for the post. I was looking into trying the ebay auction, but had my reasons for not doing it. First of all I don’t know of anyone who uses it, secondly you just confirmed to me that it would probably be a waste of my time.

Thanks again

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Let me challenge you here, in the nicest way possible.

Finding deals is like mining for gold. We have to wade through a huge amount of dirt, to locate those little nuggets.

Just because Ebay auctions doesn’t represent a shovel full of gold nuggets just laying there for the taking, doesn’t mean there’s no nuggets there for the taking…

Finding any ‘real’ nuggets requires mining, and prospecting, and sluicing, and more mining, digging, and sluicing.

So, you know who finds the golden nuggets? The ones that keep mining, digging and sluicing.

You know who only finds fool’s gold? The ones that mine, dig and sluice once, and give up.

That said, one of mistakes we make is only looking at the surface opportunities.

Searching Ebay auctions, like Craigslist, like the MLS, like Postlets, like any number of sources of leads is just surface scratching. The real nuggets are more often found digging below the surface, as in going down the mine shaft.

This includes getting on the mailing list of sellers advertising their ‘leader items’ on Ebay auctions, Craigslist, etc.

Meanwhile, VERY FEW deals ever get advertised. And that’s the reason that establishing relationships with these lead sources is where the prospecting pays off the most.

If we create and maintain relationships with the people advertising houses for sale (including agents), we’ll more often/likely be given the opportunity to steal the nuggets that never see the light of day.

Of course, I call this prospecting approach, “Going down the mine shaft.”

Most people don’t want to go down the mine shaft. It’s scary, unpredictable. Sometimes the roof falls in. There’s bats. Dead Canaries. But, this is mostly where the real gold nuggets are found.

So put on your hardhat, and find the mine shaft for Ebay auctions, Craigslist, Postlets, Thrifty Nickel, PennySaver, and wherever else a deal is advertised.

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Wow, words to live by. I got my miners hat. I’m ready to dig. I like how Napoleon Hill says it.
“You have to Go the extra mile”