I wanted to make a blog post about one of the properties we purchased about 6 years ago. An older gentleman, we’ll call him Bill for the sake of privacy, reached out to us about a property he wanted to sell. After talking with him and asking some due diligence questions, I told him I’d call him back the next day after doing some research.
It was an infill lot in Dallas, TX. Through my research I found that the property was a good fit for a home site, had a few large trees on it that could be trimmed and salvaged, and already had utilities at the property from the previous home that was demolished by the City.
Bill had inherited the property from his mother when she passed away. His goal was to fix it up and sell it. But he couldn’t keep the homeless people from breaking into it and squatting. They had stripped all the copper and other metals from it right away and kept breaking the doors and windows to get in. Eventually, it caught fire and nearly burned to the ground.
He never fixed or rebuilt it. And a couple years later the City bulldozed it. It had some liens. About $6,000 worth. But he held onto the lot for 7 years after the house was bulldozed and maintained it the best he could. It wasn’t in the best part of town, so values never rose very much. No one was building new homes in the area yet. And Bill, bless his heart, told me he was tired of mowing it twice a month and cleaning up the trash that people were illegally dumping on it. Old mattresses and other furniture, piles of broken concrete, you name it and he had found it there and hauled it to the dump. Year after year code enforcement sent him code violation notices.
We reached out to Bill via mail to inquire about buying the property. As I was doing some preliminary due diligence, I noticed that the property was actually in someone else’s name. and Bill had been added to the Assessor account as C/O (care of).
So I called him back the next day and we started talking price. We haggled back and forth for bit and we finally came to terms on price. He wanted $18,000 for the lot. We agreed on $14,000 since I would need to hold it for a few years and maintain it. I asked him about the owner on title and he confirmed that it was his mother’s and told me the story about his mother passing away and about his experience with the property over the years. Then he told me he was tired. Tired of messing with it and just wanted to get rid of it.
I told him he would need to probate his mother’s estate to be able to sell the lot. But since he was retired and on a fixed income, he didn’t have the money to pay an attorney for the probate. He had inquired about it after she passed away and it was going to cost $6,500. And his mother hadn’t left much and didn’t have any life insurance. So I told him I had an attorney whom would do it for a couple thousand less than that amount, and we could get it done in about 60 days. Then we could adjust the price to reimburse us for the attorney’s fees, and buy the property.
He told me he had been approached many times by other investors, but when they found out the property needed probate, they lost interest and stopped accepting his calls. No one ever offered him a solution to get the property sold. Otherwise, he said he would’ve sold it years ago.
In the end, he didn’t sell the property for as much as he wanted to. But he told me he was so grateful that we had helped him because he was ready to give up and just let it go to tax sale. I told him we actually help land owners in this way all the time, and that I was regretful we didn’t reach out to him sooner. I’m glad we found Bill and were able to help him.
This is why I love this business. We were able to solve a problem for Bill, and buy a good lot for a new home we built several years later for a new family in an opportunity zone. And everybody won, all the way around.
We’ve bought properties like this over and over again, and helped people whom were ready to just give up. I still talk to Bill sometimes. I call to check in on him a couple times a year. I’ve even taken him to lunch a few times when I’m in the Dallas area to check in on projects. He always sounds happy to hear from me when I call him.
If you think this is something that could work for you, give us a call below or fill out the form on the website. It’s risk-free, and no obligation to you to discuss our offer.
David Scruggs
(405) 352-2000
www.spiritlandco.com