What I Do When I Can't Sell A Property

When A House Won't Sell...

I currently have a house that is a piece of crap. It is in horrible condition in a less than "aspirational" neighborhood. I've sent this property out to my buyer's list, marketed it online, posted it to online classified sites, syndicated it to other wholesalers, put out bandit signs and still haven't been able to sell it.

Get A Price Concession

Whenever I have this much difficulty selling a property like this, its usually because the price is too high. So I went back to the owner and got a pricing reduction and I think I've gotten the price as low as I think we're going to get it. I've even gotten him to agree to a structured purchase as well but the property still isn't selling. So what's a guy to do?

When Price Reductions Don't Work

I learned this little trick from Sean Terry via one of his podcasts last year. It's a pretty nifty tactic and while I only bring it out every now and again (because it can be a little time consuming and also has implicit costs associated with it), at the very least, it helps to get traffic to a property. What's this little tactic called?

What To Look For When Researching Comparable Sales

Example of Comparables Sold

Comparable sales are important in determining the value of the properties we analyze. There are a few points to keep in mind when looking for comparable sales which I've detailed below. You also normally want to find at least three comparable sales in the past six months otherwise it may be incredibly difficult to sell your property.

Size

The target homes you are looking for should be within 20% of the size of the house. For example, if the house you are evaluating is 1000 square feet, you should look for homes that are generally between 800 and 1200 square feet.

My Favorite Websites To Research Real Estate Related Values

Our team uses a number of websites to pull information that we use to construct offers. Here are the top five websites we use:

RedFin

RedFin is by far my favorite website to use to research property values. You can easily find everything from comparable sales,  current listings and filter down to the specific types of properties. The best way to use the website is to actually log in so that you can see neighborhood information and comparables sold. Many times, RedFin will also give you value estimate ranges from Zillow and Eppraisal.com.

RedFin Example