Lance and I have been having pretty good success with getting the phones to ring from our direct mail marketing. This represents and huge step forward from where we were back before the new year. On average we are getting 10 to 15 calls a week and the amount is only limited by the number of mailers I can afford to send out.
Out of the all the callers, we end up looking at about 2 or 3 houses a week. We only look at the houses if the seller would consider our initial ball park figure. This is to keep us from wasting our time and looking at houses where we have no shot at getting. So we are basically making an initial offer to anyone willing to sell and then seeing the house if we are close on price.
Yesterday Lance gave me a call in the middle of the afternoon, which I thought was odd because he normally just emails me. His first words were…”I am so excited I needed to call you right away…” This obviously peaked my interest.
We have actually agreed to a price on a house! The owner said she just wants to walk away from the property and is willing to take our offer of $120k. The offer is contingent on us getting into the house and doing a repair estimate. The owner lives out of state and won’t be up until May so that is when we will make everything final.
A question I have for anyone who might have an opinion. Could we use an option contract to temporarily lock this property up now? And if so, does anyone have one handy they could lend out?
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scott, you actually don’t need a specific option contract. any purchase and sale agreement with a good weasel clause is a de facto option. just put in a closing date of your choice. and you don’t need a bunch of escape clauses…one good one is all you need. best of luck on this house!
Thanks Chan. I never thought about that. I was just looking for something simple that would serve as an agreement. A one pager type
scott, you actually don’t need a specific option contract. any purchase and sale agreement with a good weasel clause is a de facto option. just put in a closing date of your choice. and you don’t need a bunch of escape clauses…one good one is all you need. best of luck on this house!
Scott – Just write up the contract subject to inspection. Put a 60 day clause in it as the seller may not get there in a timely manner. I also use “partner approval” a lot of times when I want to buy me some time.
Some people think that “partner approval” clause is a big weasel clause. The inspection clause I like and also put something in there about being able to get into the property by a certain date is a great idea as well. Thanks Sharon!
Some people think that “partner approval” clause is a big weasel clause. The inspection clause I like and also put something in there about being able to get into the property by a certain date is a great idea as well. Thanks Sharon!
If you want an option contract Scott instead of using “weasel” clauses just let me know…I have one you could use. (I’m not a big fan of weasel clauses…..)
With that said putting an inspecition contigency in there as Sharon recommended isn’t a weasel clause, imo. It’s a valid contigency. So it’s definitely worth just writing up the contract!
Thanks Carey, shoot me an email at scostell@yahoo.com
Good stuff, Scotty! For the record I agree that a contract with inspection contingency should do the trick here. The thing about option contracts is that you’d still have to do another contract later and that seller could work with another buy….might as well lock the sucker up.
Just realized that this post was a few days ago now….do you have a contract locked up now?
Thanks Carey, shoot me an email at scostell@yahoo.com