THE SELLER WANTED TO HOSE MY BUYERS FOR $75,OOO

My buyers (now friends!) found a piece of land for sale by owner, thanks to their friends who were buying the land next door. They reached out to their lender, who told them if anyone could make it happen, it was me… (he’s not wrong!).

Let me preface this by saying this is by far one of the most unique situations I’ve experienced in my whole career.

Not the fact that it was for sale by owner… but it was what the owner thought he could get out of my buyers that was outrageous.

You see, the land had a manufactured home (MFH) on it.

It didn’t take me long to discover that seller had NEVER carried out the terms required by his financing (another can of worms, because the lender could have called the note due if it was discovered).

He had NEVER converted the MFH to real property. BIG SNAFU for him. GREAT FOR US.

Most agents would have found this out at the title search stage, after offering to overpay. Messy!

While the price he was asking wasn’t justified even if he had done the right things, now we had a HUGE bargaining chip.

We immediately developed an offer for the land ONLY, with the requirement that the seller remove the MFH before closing.

Because of the age and condition of the MFH, it either would have cost my friends money to have it removed, or they would have overpaid.

The presentation of the offer was a little tense, because I knew I couldn’t call the seller out- we wanted him to take our offer, after all. BUT I had to let him know what I’d found.

After I explained the terms, I casually said:

“Oh, by the way, you might want to call the county because their records make it look like the manufactured home wasn’t converted to real property. You should call them and see what’s up.”

A smirk spread across his face as he said “yeah… I don’t think I ever did that.”

He accepted our offer as it was three days later, and my buyers got their land for $75,000 less than he’d asked- fair market value- AND he hauled the manufactured home off before closing. 

Wild!! They’ll be building their dream home on it next year.