Ever wonder what it looks like to go see a house before you make a cash offer?
Well, in today’s episode of painless flipping, I’m about to take you through an eye opening journey. I’m talking to a seller who’s eager to sell and he assures me that the house is impressing condition says it looks great.
I usually don’t go see houses because I buy homes over the phone virtually. But I decided to go take a look at this house because it was close to my office. And I thought it was worth going to see the house because the seller didn’t live locally.
He was a landlord that lived in Vegas, and this property was here in Utah where I live. But when I went to go see the house, what I found hard to describe. So that’s why I’m going to take you through this journey of why it’s important to go see houses and what you can find.
Trust me when I say this one is for the record books stick around to the end of the video to see how this unforgettable story unfolds. And whether I ended up getting a deal of a lifetime or ended up walking away from the house because it was so disgusting. But before we dive into the story, do me a favor and subscribe to the channel real quick.
Our story begins with a seller that insisted that his property was a hidden gem. As I was talking to him on the phone, I asked him about the necessary things for me to know if it was a deal that I should pursue or not. I asked him about the condition of the property, the motivation, why he was selling his timeline, and his asking price, his asking price was a little high. But these days, everybody’s asking prices high. They all want as much as they can get for the property.
And usually you have to go dive in deeper into the conversation to find out if the house needs work and all that. So I asked him, Hey, tell me a little bit about the condition.
He said, oh just needs a little bit of carpet and paint. But I was kind of sensing there was something there. Maybe he wasn’t telling me. So I asked him a little bit more about the situation. He told me there was a tenant involved. It was a rental property for him. And he lived in Las Vegas.
And he just wanted to sell this house. So for an investment so he could get his money out and invest in something else. Usually I wouldn’t go see the house because I negotiated over the phone. And I don’t want to drive all the way out there to waste my time.
And you know, see a property that he says is in good condition, it would be a waste of my time. So it’s better for me just to kind of get a ballpark and make him an offer. But he said, Look, there’s a lot of people going.
And again, I thought something there was a hunch I had, I felt like there was something going on there that maybe I should go check out the property. It’s not that far from my office and see what’s going on. So I decided to investigate. So I hopped in my car and drove all the way down to see the property with the idea with the expectation that it might be in worse condition than he thought.
And that usually happens when there’s landlords that don’t live in the state and don’t go see the property very often tenants usually neglect the property, especially if he wants to sell for cash as is fast, there’s got to be something behind it.
This is an interesting situation very hard to develop rapport with the seller over the phone, once went to lunch, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to show him hey, I’m willing to go to the house, show him that I’m a real investor, I think I can set myself apart from the other investors that way after seeing the house, then I can make him multiple offers.
You know, if I can buy for cash, as I go buy it on terms, if we can do an ovation, we partner on the property together and do a flip together a lot of different options, but you’re going to see a house you need to determine, Okay, is it worth my time is seller really going to sell their motivation, but someone that’s just like, Yeah, I’m gonna list it if I don’t get what I want. Or there’s like, I’m just gonna keep it if I don’t get what I want.
That’s another reason not to go see the house because you can just give them a low range and see what they say to that. But anyway, that’s kind of a, in a nutshell, what we’re going to do today by seeing this house. So curiosity got the better part of me. So I went and saw the property, and you won’t believe what I saw.
I pull up to the property and they get an unexpected surprise. As I’m pulling up their property. I see someone standing outside of the door of the property, I assume it’s the seller who from Vegas maybe flew out there. So not only did I see someone standing in front of the property, I saw older gentleman, white haired gentleman old guy standing talking to him.
So I said, Oh man, this must be another buyer. He must have scheduled multiple buyers at one time to walk through this is kind of awkward. This doesn’t really happen very often, the seller probably did it like this because he’s not local.
And he just told us to go buy all at the same time. All good. So I walk up to the buyer, I walk up to the person that’s standing for the door, I find out that it’s the tenant, and he doesn’t want us to come in. He’s like, Oh, guys, it’s really messy. I don’t want you to come in. I turn over and look at the old man.
And he’s like, Yeah, I’m coming to see the house. And also I’m bringing one of my buyers to he was a broker. He was looking to bring one of his buyers and show him the property. Now I said to him, hey, that’s totally fine. How about we do this? How about you goes to the house first so I don’t get in your way.
And then once you go, I can go look at it because I also wanted to get some footage of the house so I could record it. Not only have it for this video, but also so I could run my numbers and send it to my buyers. Nathan, Nathan.
Yeah. Michael. Michael. I have not Oh, you’re not? Fortunately I think it’s a double showing at the same time. Okay, so what’s what’s kind of the situation like, Are you moving out of here? He’s deciding to sell it or yeah, he’s headed. So the tenant again, doesn’t want us to come in but finally reluctantly, he’s like fine. He lets the other buyer go in and I stay on the outside looking at the property I take a look to see if there’s any damage the house needed to paint, it needed quite a few things on the exterior.
So I waited about 510 minutes and wait for the other buyer to come out. And he finally eventually does with the person that he brought. And you know, he’s got a look of disgust on his face. So I go up to him, I said, you know, how’s the property? What are you thinking about being around? He doesn’t want to tell me what he’s going to offer.
But so I just throw it out there and say, Hey, I ran my numbers, this house is probably worth about 500,000 fixed up if it’s not too bad, I probably could get away with about 380 or 400,000. put some money into it and resell it and make a you know, flip it the guy laughs a little bit both laughed at me like no, this thing needs to be around 300,000 The low three hundreds.
I was shocked because according to the landlord, the person that was selling the house, he said it was in decent condition. So I’m kind of wondering what I’m gonna get. So finally, it was my time to see the house and I was ready to go not knowing what I would see finally got in the house and I just saw a bunch of stuff everywhere. I just saw garbage. I said it wasn’t that crazy. A
t the beginning. When I walked in the front. I was like, Okay, it’s just a little messy. No problem. Then he takes me from the kitchen. The kitchen needed to be worked on. He takes me to the garage. The garage is stack full of stuff and the tenants like hey, look, there used to be twice as full as this. I’ve taken I think he said 30 tonnes.
He said some crazy numbers. Like I’ve taken two or three tonnes to the dump already. So this was a lot more than you’re seeing right now. I was like okay, so he takes me through the kitchen. I’m seeing the kitchen needs to be done. The floors need to be done. Pretty much everything I’ve seen so far needs to be done.
He takes me upstairs. I see a big ol hole in the ceiling. There’s a big hole in the ceiling where the swamp cooler has been leaking. No AC just a swamp cooler. Wow. I’m like, Okay, there’s already a lot of work. I can see new floor needs to be done. He takes me to the bathroom. This is when I start getting a little shocked. I’m a little shocked at this moment. Because as I walk into the bathroom, I see something that shocks me. I see poop in the shower tub in the bathtub.
There’s actual poop. There’s actual poop in the bathroom. And I’m like what’s going on here? This is getting a little crazy. And you know as I walked through I’m starting to notice a little bit more poop everywhere. I’m like, why is there poop everywhere in this house? And by the way, I’m not saying all this to roast this guy.
You know, I’m not here to say anything bad about him. I’m just saying this is what I found out. And this is the same house that the seller who was saying he wanted a lot for his house and it was in decent condition. I’m sure he knew about it. But anyway, I walked the other bathroom in the bathtub is nasty looks like hasn’t been cleaned in years.
So I walked down back down the stairs and I noticed this is when I really noticed that there’s eight dogs in the backyard all behind you know a sliding glass door and then I see a couple cats running around in all clicks they just have a ton of pets that they have not cleaned the poop they have not cleaned these these pets for I don’t know how long months.
So I don’t know I need to see anymore. I don’t really need to see much more. But I added respect. I wasn’t saying anything disrespectful. I walked downstairs poop everywhere. And we get into the basement literally rooms full poop. There’s poop on the window seals poop on the floor. I’m having to like walk. It’s dried. It’s I’m sorry, I don’t want to get too deep into it.
But it was just it was intense. I’ve never been in a house that’s had people living in it, unfortunately, living in it that had poop everywhere. Now I walk up and I know there’s something deeper here there’s a big problem. So I asked the 10 I said, Hey, I’m really sorry. Sounds like you got a lot going on like you want. He’s gonna tell me what’s going on? Like, is there anything I can help you with? He tells me unfortunately that, you know, his wife just left him.
He just lost his job. He’s depressed, he doesn’t have any money. He’s behind on rent for two months. So now we’re finding out that this is a way bigger problem than, you know I originally anticipated or what I even thought from talking to the seller seller played at all cool. He was like, Oh, good. So the tenant tells me he’s behind and I say, look, if I buy this house, I can’t keep you in here. Unfortunately, you’re not paying rent. He’s like, Yeah, just give me two months.
And you know, I’ll be out of here. I’m really sorry. He was really sad. And I offered help. Because again, this is sad. This is not to roast the man for having a house that was really dirty. There’s obviously a lot of animals hard to take care of. And he’s going through a lot. So I had empathy for him.
I was like, Man, how can I help? And you know, eventually I was like, Hey, before I go, you know, is there anything I can do for you? He let me know that the church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that I belong to is actually the neighborhood that he was in.
They were trying to help. They were helping them with food, and they were helping them in any way they could. So anyway, I leave the property and I’m just shocked. I’m like, wow, the numbers that I ran on this house don’t make sense.
Obviously what he was asking us asthma for for 15. My numbers needed to be around like 400 like for it to make sense in a good condition. But this house was not in a good condition everybody
