I live a charmed life, just now, and I know it. The resale market in the Valley of the Ever-Fecund Sun has been all my way for seven-ish years, culminating in our current simmering state of frenzy.
The investors I work with bought and bought and bought when nobody was buying. We’ve managed those properties as rentals over the last decade, and for the past few years we have been divesting some of them. I just sold one, which we’re about to talk about, and I have more on deck. One flight to safety leads to another, it turns out.
So here’s my fish story: We just now closed on the sale of the house in the picture, on West Monroe Street in Coldwater Springs in Avondale, AZ. I was the Buyer’s Agent nine years ago, and we’ve managed it since then, with almost no vacancy and little in the way of costs. Ignoring all the rental income and the tax benefits, the investor tripled his initial investment at COE. Those funds are moving by 1031 exchange into something safer – to everyone’s relief.
That much is just buy-low/sell-high. My guys were cash-rich and credit-rich when nobody else was, so: “When there’s blood in the streets, buy land.” They were working with me, so we bought very carefully – wicked aggressive on price, but we bid only on properties that I knew would rent well and sell high. That much has proved true, so they were monied fishermen with a seasoned guide.
So here’s the fish story: I took the house back from the tenants at 9 am on September 30th. I had the deep-cleaners in with me by 9:30, and I had my punch-list: Half-a-dozen handyman jobs, plus two bigger issues I thought might come up on repairs. My plan was to list on October 8th, so there was plenty of time – with the tenants’ Security Deposit as a buffer on the budget. But the house was decent the way it was – or would be when the cleaners finished – and the market at that moment could not have been hotter.
Do the touch-ups and miss the market? Do the touch-ups and risk a doofus lister with an under-market comp pulling my number down? Or: List at once and do the touch-ups later if the house lasts the weekend?
That last one is what we did. There’s a conditioning-the-client story in here, but here’s how it ends: I spent 90 minutes with the investor defending my thesis before I closed on him. And then all I said was this: “We’ll list just after midnight at $280,000. That’s $5,000 over anything I can swear an appraiser will hit, so we will entertain any strong cash or conventional offer. If I get the action I’m expecting, I’m just going to play handball all weekend.”
And that’s how the house sold, too, with me working the offers over the weekend. Five offers, total, three all cash – in 14 showings. We sold for $290,000, all cash, in 4 days-on-market, 23 days total to close – and 29 days total since I took possession of the home. The Buyer asked for no repairs – that’s kosher; we were good, just not great. We finished $10k over list, $15k over market (until today), $23k over the recent high sale in this floorplan. Even better: Fast, easy and fun for the investor – with a very entertaining performance from my end.
Here’s the fish story part: To prepare the home for market, we paid our locksmith and the cleaners – no one else. After the junk fees in the lease and a charge against the Security Deposit, the investor’s total pre-market outlay was $257.50.
It would have been more, had we waited to list, and we could have gotten less for the home. My hat’s off to my investor for trusting me with such an outrageous proposition: “Let’s hurry up and make more by doing less!” But I’m grateful to him and to my other investors for working with me all along. There’s no accounting for fortune – but fortune favors the well-prepared.
