I can wade through 90% of it before you even pick up a pencil. Sound interesting?
There’s a saying you’ll hear a lot in real estate investing: if you need a calculator to determine if something is a deal, it’s not a deal.
Obviously you need to run financial projections and all that.
But the point is that a truly good deal will sort of jump off the page at you. It’s clearly priced in a way that makes it appear to be below market, without requiring a spreadsheet.
Of course, it doesn’t take long being in this business to learn that if something is really cheap, there’s usually a reason.
Something’s wrong.
It’s almost totally in the floodplain. It’s got pipeline easements on it that make it look like a spiderweb. It has no road frontage. Or any number of things.
A lot of times what catches my eye turns out to be something that wouldn’t really be worth owning if they gave it to you. At least not from an investment perspective.
But not always.
Every so often I run across something that’s priced low and doesn’t appear to have the usual problems. The sort of thing that makes me stop and look harder.
And if it’s in an area where I already know someone who would be interested, I usually know who to call. But sometimes it’s in an area where I don’t have someone looking.
That’s what the Buyer’s Short List is for.
Covering 21 counties in North Texas, I have a screen that flags newly available or reduced-price listings that are priced low relative to what’s been selling around them.
Most of them aren’t deals, for the reasons discussed above.
But every once in a while, one makes it through the first screen and still looks interesting after I dig into it.
If you’re on the Short List, when that happens you get an email and a chance to see more.
No schedule. No spam. Just when something makes it through.
Is it a bad idea to minimize the time you spend looking at bad deals?