This arrived earlier today. I felt compelled to share (my emphasis in bold).
Hello Francy and Jay,
I’m looking for a house for my mother, who wants to retire in AZ
We are looking to buy now and I have found a property that might be a good place to begin
The listing is below
The marketing is woefully inadequate
I’ve seen 50 photos of a $4,000 car on eBay and those are excellent images
You guys in real estate have had it good for too long and your industry is lazy, inept and inefficient
The property is a mfg home with a possible mold problem, I am reading, and I understand that all risk is on the buyer, because sellers who are in the business of lending on real estate can’t afford to hire an inspector to give them a report or the sellers don’t have the expertise to know the condition of a property and they can’t find out, so they pass on all the risk to the buyer……………OK, that makes their properties worth less and my offer will reflect the position that we take all the risk……..I’ll hire a mycologist to inspect the property for mold problemsWe only plan to use the property for a year, because my mother wants a nicer home and intends to pay cash for it, but we need a base so we can begin our search and this current listing of yours works fine for us at a price of about $25,000
We know that it’s a down market and we have read that those in default a year or two ago were all from the subprime debacle but today, those who are defaulting have conventional loans and had good credit
I don’t know anyone who is really doing well and it seems that everyone is on the verge of bankruptcy
One realtor told me that everyone he knows has left the real estate business and some are now delivering pizzas to make ends meet
When real estate prices are rising, you want to own, but when the elevator is going down, you don’t get on, unless you really need to buy
The mfg homes are nearly impossible to finance and so we feel it might be prudent to buy one with cash, but we don’t want to pay today’s value because we think that will fall to about half in the coming months, as the commercial real estate market collapses, the stock market crashes and the dollar becomes worthless
If you see a brighter future, please tell me how you arrived at your opium……..I mean optimistic view! Ha!
We see yet another wave of foreclosures, because 48% of all homeowners owe more than the property is worth and that’s another $10 trillion in real estate, just waiting to be walked away from
If it’s wrong then why don’t you put in half and we will buy this one, together?
Anyway, $25,000…………all cash…………close in 10 days, after all my questions are answered……….and if you think the seller will entertain this, please send me some photos of the property
Proof of funds will follow, if you want to work with us
Here is what I’m thinking of for a reply….
Dear… sir;
Arizona is a great place for your mother to retire!
I feel I need to point out that this home you are inquiring about, and accusing me of being “lazy, inept and inefficient” in my “woefully inadequate” marketing, is in fact not our listing.
You see, you incorrectly assumed that all 41,000+ listings you are seeing when you search for homes on my web site are listed by our brokerage. While I will readily put our brokerage, and our agents, up against any in the Phoenix area, I can assure you that we do not carry 41,000 listings.
As you can see from the description you emailed me, this is a HUD home. That means the federal government owns it. So even if it was my listing, it would be difficult to contact the “seller” and see if they will “entertain” your offer of $25K on the $40K manufactured home. I’ll be honest, I don’t have a private line number for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and given the general bureaucracy of the government, I suspect there is no one person that could say, “Sure, we’ll take an offer 38% below market value” even if they wanted to.
That’s why, as is mentioned in the listing information, they use a bid process.
We are a registered brokerage with HUD, and we could submit a bid for you. But I’m thinking we’ll pass.
While the Realtor you talked to that doesn’t know any agent who isn’t delivering pizzas to make ends meet, we’re doing OK. So we don’t need to submit your offer that will never be accepted. It would be a complete waste of time for us, and you.
You say you don’t want to pay today’s value because you think that value will fall 50% in the coming months for a variety of reasons.
Well then, I’d suggest waiting a few months. Why not rent a home in the coming months and then snatch one up a half of today’s value? I’m not sure how you define “coming months”, but let’s say for the sake of argument that’s six months. Why spend $25,000 now on a moldy manufactured home that as you correctly point out will be difficult to sell when the time comes. That comes out to over $4,000 per month. You could rent your mother a virtual palace for half that cost and apply the savings to a better home once you’re convinced the coming tsunami has passed.
Good luck!
That’s what I want to say. But instead I think I’ll just hit the delete key…
I'm Jay Thompson, and I have a little blogging problem... Welcome to The Phoenix Real Estate Guy, or "TPREG" as I fondly refer to it.
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