Anyone else getting phone calls wanting to buy your property?

[Kev Williams]

Not once but twice yesterday I was cold-called by humans, who both asked for me personally, wanting to know if I'd like to have an offer made on my property at my home address, which both callers knew. Normally someone knowing my address wouldn't bother me much since it's also my business, and anyone googling "engravers" in the area can get directions to and a picture of the place. But neither of these people knew this was a business address. My personal phone numbers have been unpublished since the '70's and my land line biz phone number has NEVER been published in my name. But public records being public, not exactly an impossible task to figure out I own a home and track my phone number...

Anyway, it sounds a bit predatory to me, what with half the planet unable to pay their mortgage payments...

[Tom M King]

Maybe. I get a lot of calls that I don't answer. No call gets answered if the caller is not in my contact list.

We do get letters offering to buy property from us, about every other week. The last was for some timber land that has 30 years of growth on it. They offered a little less than the land value would be if it didn't have anything on it. We get a laugh out of them, and they go right in the trash.

I guess they get it from property tax records-don't know.

[Greg Funk]

We sold our first house from a cold call by a real-estate agent. They had a client who picked a number of houses in our neighborhood they liked and the agent contacted us and inquired whether we'd be interested in selling. We had been thinking of a move but hadn't made any efforts to listing. This turned out to be a painless way to sell our house. I don't recall if the agent phoned us or just knocked on our door but maybe something similar going on here?

[Bruce Wrenn]

Daily we get cards wanting to buy our house. Often they include pictures from road front (google.) Some times they even show the structure, including the brick work on structure. Notice I didn't say house. The reason is, the picture is of church next door. For fun, call them back, and explain there was no "earnest money check" included with their offer. Send me a check, and we can talk. As the saying goes "Show me the money!"

[Rick Potter]

Oh yeah. It has slowed down with the pandemic, but I averaged about 8-10 calls a week, not counting mail and e-mail. I always ask them what investment seminar they recently attended, but they always play dumb.

Some calls are from Realtors who have a house in the area they recently sold, but most are calls on buying my rental properties. I usually ask what they think it is worth, and they ask what address it is, then I hang up. Very seldom do they ask about a specific property, and those are usually Realtors looking for listings.

We rarely answer the house phone, and screen them later.

There are people who specialize in selling lists of possible 'clients'.

[John K Jordan]

Oh yeah. It has slowed down with the pandemic, but I averaged about 8-10 calls a week, not counting mail and e-mail. I always ask them what investment seminar they recently attended, but they always play dumb....

I feel so left out. I've never gotten a call about buying my house and farm. I don't get robo calls on my cell phone anymore either, except maybe once a month. (I might get some one the home phone, I don't know because I never check.)

I do get calls from people wanting to buy peacocks, but maybe that's because of the ad on Craigslist. :) Sold a bunch of peacocks that way at $100 each.

JKJ

[Jim Koepke]

Last time this happened to me it was a broker who to my best guess some how found me through my mother in law's obituary. He wanted to know if her house was going to be up for sale, it wasn't. But my house in the same area was being vacated by our daughter and her husband to move into their grandmother's home. So he brokered our old California residence. It worked out for everyone pretty much.

jtk

[Bill Dufour]

My wife hates it when we get the postcard that they will buy our house since it is in such bad shape. no need for us to do repairs or mow the lawn.
Bil lD

[John Goodin]

I work in the real estate industry but not as an agent. This is very common in neighborhoods where there is a great demand for houses but a limited supply. If so, it is a good indicator you could sell your house for more than you think.

[Bob Glenn]

We hold the mortgages on four houses that we rented, then sold on contract to the long time tenants. We periodically get offers to buy out the mortgage contracts. I've never entertained that option and would not do that to our mortgagors. I'm sure they would offer just pennies on the dollar of value left on the contracts.

[Kev Williams]

I forgot to mention these 2 calls showed 'wireless caller' on my caller ID. I'm a business so I answer wireless calls most times. Calls I don't answer have a city/state on the caller ID, almost all are either Google or some robot letting me know I can borrow gazillions of dollars..

[carey mitchell]

We got a call from a realtor, who we have known for years, who had several new doctors coming to our hospital and were looking at homes. One had driven up our street to look at another home that had a "for sale" sign, saw ours and liked the looks. We got it ready to show the next day, and when we came back an hour later, the realtor was standing on the steps with a signed contract ! Should have asked a lot more.

Scared the hell out of us, as we had nowhere to go. doctor was willing to rent an apartment for up to 3 months to give us time (damn, should have asked more).

[Tom M King]

The letters we get typically have the plat number, and acreage amount in decimal points. The last one was for some 83.6ty something piece of timber land. They were offering 69k plus some odd amount of dollars. You can buy cut over timberland around here for 1k an acre, but timber growth can easily go way over the land value. They must think we're idiots, but I guess they might find some.

Once, we got a nice little handwritten note saying that they would like to buy "waterfront property at____address", listing the plat number. No price was mentioned. We have waterfront property, but that piece wasn't close to any water.

A buyer wrote me a check for a house I built in 1983. I never used a realtor, but just a sign at the road when I was getting close to being ready to sell a house. He looked it over for about 45 minutes. He drove off, not quite out of sight, turned around, drove in the driveway, and wrote me a check for it right there. Like Carey said, I probably should have asked more.

[Rob Luter]

We sold our first house from a cold call by a real-estate agent. They had a client who picked a number of houses in our neighborhood they liked and the agent contacted us and inquired whether we'd be interested in selling. We had been thinking of a move but hadn't made any efforts to listing. This turned out to be a painless way to sell our house. I don't recall if the agent phoned us or just knocked on our door but maybe something similar going on here?

We had that happen in the mid 1990's. We lived in a vintage neighborhood that had been well cared for and where the houses were still affordable. Brick streets, white picket fences, bungalows. Real Beaver Cleaver stuff. Realtors would knock on doors to gauge interest in selling. When we relocated due to a job transfer we had three full price offers on the table two days after listing. I think we left money on the table.

[Stan Calow]

We have tons of advertisements, signs, and calls from people wanting to buy "ugly houses". My impression is that this is a result of the "flipper" movement, and people wanting to find bargains they can turn a profit on. Real estate agents are just blanketing neighborhoods with solicitations in order to boost their listings.

[Jim Koepke]

Should have asked a lot more.


Like Carey said, I probably should have asked more.


I think we left money on the table.

One thing to remember when selling anything, it is easier to come down on price than it is to go up.

We left money on the table being pretty sure it was going to a flipper. A lot of work was needed to get it into shape.

When selling our house in California 10 years after moving to Washington the offer was lower than we wanted. After countering the offer the thought that we may have been able to get more did occur to me. It is one of those things that is always part of seller's remorse.

Nothing can be done about it now. It doesn't make me feel any better to dwell on it. Life goes on.

jtk

[Eric Danstrom]

For those that feel you left money on the table; did you use an appraisal to set the value? I know in a big up market things sell for more than the appraisal but I always use it as a starting point. If there's a mortgage involved it seems everything is driven by the appraisal.

[Tom M King]

When I sold new houses, of which I built one of a year for 33 years, I never used an appraisal. For something over the first ten years, I was selling partially completed houses, so no one would have been able to give a good appraisal anyway. The first few years, they were only completed shells. As I got better, and better equipped, they grew larger, and larger, and finished. That was 1974 until 2007-looked like a good time to quit.

I did all the work with my hands, and a couple of low scale laborers. My general rule of thumb was that I doubled what I had in one, and rounded up to the nearest round sounding number. I can't complain, but I probably could have sold some of them for more.

I had one bank that would loan money to anyone who would buy one of my houses, without even looking at it, so that made things a lot easier. Several were paid for outright.