The title says it all!
By far and away the overwhelming majority of calls I get these days from prospective buyers comes down to Short Sales Bargains Deals and Steals. Almost every conversation starts out with something like - "I'm looking for a good deal." That makes perfect sense, who isn't?
Sometimes the conversation starts out with "I'm looking to steal something." I'm not really sure what to make of that. But, the steals are what professional real estate investors do. And how they do it is by buying distressed property (financially and physically) well below market value. The emphasis is on distressed, in this case, and it is really on the physical aspects and the property's location. These professionals first determine what the market value of the property would be if rehabilitated, compute the cost for the rehabilitation and deduct it from the market value, and then determine what they will pay with a little bit of profit added in.
Distressed properties seldom represent the properties that consumers from "up north" are looking for in their second winter home or, perhaps, their retirement home. Also, they usually don't represent the properties that local families are looking for either but there are always exceptions for the do-it-yourself fixer-upper types. I find that people tend to go astray when they buy something because is was a "good deal" rather than buying what they really wanted. When doing this, it usually leads to buyer's remorse and another sale/purchase down the road. And, if it was a good deal in the first place, the economic advantage is usually eaten up with the extra transaction and costs associated with the move.
Then there are the short sales discussions. I have had these discussions so many times that I wrote a short sale primer and Short Sales Bargains Deals and Steals, Are They? pages and put them on my web site.
I hope you find these useful.
