The Pigeon House.
My bird dog Rick from a nearby small town recently spent $150 on gas and a few days time driving for dollars and sent me addresses of more than 200 vacant junky houses. I sent them by email to my Title Company and soon had the names and mailing addresses of the owners. I immediately sent out yellow letters.
One of my calls was from a lady named Martha, and she said she was indeed willing to sell her house. She tells me the roof had collapsed and she had been forced to move into a nearby apartment. I sent Rick back over to take some photos. The exterior was really bad, front porch was rotted, the exterior wood siding had holes in it and all the paint was peeling. I offered Martha $17,000, she also mentioned there was a medical lien for 10K on the property from when her husband got sick and passed away.
She then tells me she talked to a Realtor and he told her the lot alone was worth at least 40K and that is the price she would accept. I contacted my buyer and to my surprise he says he will pay $45K for it.
A few days later Rick and I met Martha at the house to sign the agreement and seal the deal for $40,000. We stood outside in the back yard for a while chatting and I took a few photos and then asked to see the inside. She looked nervous and says I don’t think I brought the key, is it important for you to see the inside? I said yes of course, we need to know what we’re buying. She went to her car and brought back a key ring and says, I really don’t want to show you the inside because it’s a mess. I told her, oh, don’t worry, we have seen much worse.
HAHA, little did I know. I was a little confused because from the outside the roof looked good and I didn’t understand why she said the roof had collapse. Well, then, we walked into the pigeon house from hell. Pigeons had been living in the attic for years, I’m talking maybe decades of accumulated pigeon droppings that got so heavy the sheet rock ceilings had collapsed into the house. None of this ladies furniture had been removed and all of it was covered in huge amounts of poop. Now the birds were not living in the attic anymore, they were all inside the house living happy as can be. The birds were startled when we entered and their wings were flapping and the dust was flying.
I had to hold my breath as I walked thru and snapped a few photos. Martha and her niece wouldn’t come in. All 4 of us stood on the rotting front porch and I told Martha, wow, I didn’t expect anything that bad. Can you give us some kind of price break? She asked what price are you thinking? I told her $30,000 and I told her I don’t know if I can make a profit on it at that price. We soon settled on $36,500 And remember, we already had a firm commitment and had it sold for 45K
That means Rick and I will split $8,500 that’s $4,250 each. House is now in escrow and scheduled to close any day now. Rick and I also have another junk house in escrow which is actually in worse condition than this one and we hope to clear $3,750 each on that one. It’s still amazing to me that I can make a great living flipping houses in these horrific conditions. Let’s make some MONEY Rando
The pigeon deal finally closed yesterday, 9 friking weeks in escrow. The buyer had one excuse after another. I finally gave him another 48 hrs. It was getting to where he wudnt return my emails. Found another buyer that closed in 3 days. The girl at the Title company was the one that put me in touch with him. I gave her a $100 voucher to the local Outback Steak house and $100 in cash.
My bird dog was really frustrated as this was our first deal. He’s happy now and has committed 25% to go towards buying a list and doing some direct mail marketing.
Man, great story! You gotta love the inspections that require gas masks. I remember doing an appraisal inspection where the dog hair was 2" thick on the floor (no joke). You would have had to rake the carpet before sweeping it.
I believe the lesson here is that we shouldn’t ever forget to consider the value of the land. Often we just look at the structure, but these abandoned disasters are pretty easy to demo and recoup a ton off the dirt. Keep the stories coming.
The title company gave you the owners names? Wow! :biggrin
Is because u know them we’ll? That’s awesome!
Newbie24