Un-Motivated seller- Worth the effort? HELP!! - Posted by george from raleigh

Posted by george from raleigh on February 05, 2001 at 19:56:14:

Tony, I thought you might react like that. I just want to say what a relief it is to have people like you to run things by. I don’t want to be like some of the newbies here online who get all jazzed, run out and buy something, ANYTHING! without fully absorbing the gospel according to St. Lonnie, and then coming to the gurus to bail then out. I hope to strike a healthy balance between appropriate caution and “analysis paralysis”. Thanks for the heads up!

Un-Motivated seller- Worth the effort? HELP!! - Posted by george from raleigh

Posted by george from raleigh on February 04, 2001 at 05:54:11:

I have a situation on a very old mobile home set up in a park in Wake County, NC. Owner is the park itself, my contact is the PM. The MH is pretty rough; needs hot water heater and HVAC, which the PM will give me, but not install. Flooring and carpets need to be installed, some windows, doors, and general clean-up and painting. The PM is firm at $3,000 on the price.

Here’s the question: the PM, on behalf of the park, does arrange financing. In other words, they do their own Lonnie deals, so to speak. The PM does not have much motivation to sell to me, since they can do the deal themselves. The PM says that deals such as this one yield up to $10-11k renovated, with $2-3K down. I am so new that I don’t know if this is so or not, but in an expensive area (park is only 4 miles from Raleigh) it could well be the case. But, as this is my first deal, I am a bit intimidated by the prospect of doing perhaps extensive renovations right at the outset, without a firm feel for the values in my county.

Any ideas from the gurus?

george

Re: Un-Motivated seller- Worth the effort? HELP!! - Posted by Dan (NC/IA)

Posted by Dan (NC/IA) on February 05, 2001 at 20:54:00:

Run, you’re about to be taken for an expensive ride. I don’t know which MHP you’re talking about, but you want to be the seller, not the buyer in the Lonnie deal. It is possible to get 2K down, but not very typical in Raleigh. There are much better buys than this in Raleigh, all the time, you just have to figure out how to find them. That’s one of the tricks.

Re: Un-Motivated seller- Worth the effort? HELP!! - Posted by Tony_VA

Posted by Tony_VA on February 04, 2001 at 18:12:48:

Most of what you mention runs right down my “Don’t do” list.

For starters, I never, ever work with unmotivated sellers.

Second, I am very cautious when buying homes from parks, even parks I am in good with. I don’t like putting them on the other side of the table from me. Now if they come to me with a deal that can help them out, I will do it.

I would NOT deal in a park that also does Lonnie typed deals. These parks have too much control over me when they are both landlord and competitor. Not to mention the likelihood that they may defer my prospective buyers to homes of their own.

First deal with that much fix up and that much to buy would turn me off. Try for a home with “the right things wrong with it.” By this I mean minor repair work that your buyer can do. Things like bad spots in floors, paint, carpet etc. Stay away from large repairs such as HVAC.

ok, guys: you win! - Posted by george from raleigh

Posted by george from raleigh on February 06, 2001 at 05:09:05:

Thanks Tony and Dan. I am not going ahead on this one, and thanks for the heads up.

george