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Investing: The best days to buy

April 1st, 2009 categories: Buyers, EnergyWise House Flipping, Investors, Real Estate Tips

I have found that I get my best bargains in one of two times:  Either the first day that a listing hits the market, or after many months.   First response has worked well for me, as has being the first one in after a price reduction.   So the maxim is true, “The early bird gets the worm.”

On the other end of the spectrum the listing that has sat around for a long time can be a good deal as well.  Maybe it was over priced at the beginning.   I buy mostly foreclosures to do my Energy Wise Renovations and it seems that some banks are having difficulty coming to terms with what has happened to the value of all that collateral that they have foreclosed on.   Sometimes 6 or 8 or 10 months is needed for them to get reasonable.   Not only has the market gone down further in that time, the property may have sustained vandalism, graffitti and at least more deferred maintenance.   Add to this the pressures that go on inside a bank REO department and you can see why sometimes these old listings sell at half of their original listing price.

The other reason that a listing will stay around a long time is that it may be a really ugly house.   Really beat up.   Boarded up, broken windows, graffitti, illegal additions, meth lab, mold, etc.  And a lot more work than a normal “carpet and paint” investor is willing or capable of doing.   These are where I have found my most profitable deals of all.   It’s all about value added.  If a whole lot of value must be added, and you and your team are willing and able to do it and the others aren’t, you can leave the competitors behind and charge a lot for all that value that you added, assuming that you can buy it right.    Today I visited the ugliest house I ever bought.  It’s in its final weeks of renovation and will turn the biggest profit I’ve ever made.   I’ll post about it soon with some before and after pictures.

So I like the first day and toward the last day of a listing.   But there is another time that I am learning how to find.  That is before the first day of MLS listing.    It depends on relationships and I am beginning to build them.   I will post here for fellow investors when I have developed some successful systems at this.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Buyers, EnergyWise House Flipping, Investors, Real Estate Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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