Anyone has experience with "We buy Ugly houses" guys? Please help (Williams: foreclosure, rental)

[guy_from_mn]

Greetings all!

I am in bit of a dire situation here...I had to relocate out of MN because of job and didn't get a chance to sell my condo in downtown Saint Paul, now it has been in the market since September with absolutely no serious leads...(my less then proactive realtor is no help either). Now I am stuck with two home payments and won't be able to hang on for much longer...Lately I was advised to look into "HomeVestors" (a.k.a We buy Ugly houses) as a last resort to sell my condo below the market value and just get it off my back. But I really have no experience with this kind of dealing and was wondering if anyone can provide some help? If you or anyone you know is in a similar situation or has delt with those "HomeVestors" in the past please share your thoughts

Thanks

[allrightthen]

RENT OUT your condo.

[sugarbeet]

They'll buy it from you, but at a very low, below-market price. Not a good idea unless you are extremely desperate. Any chance you would rent it out, as the previous poster suggested?

[moving123456]

You would be better off renting it out or lowering your asking price to below all of the local "comps".

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by moving123456

You would be better off renting it out or lowering your asking price to below all of the local "comps".

How do you rent a property out when you're out of town? We're already out of our situation, but we had a townhome up there that didn't sell for over a year and we ended up taking a lowball offer just to get it out of our hair. We still made a profit, but not what we were expecting initially.

[sugarbeet]

It's not easy, but works when you have no other choice. We currently have four rental houses in a Detroit suburb. Couldn't sell any of them and now are hoping we can rent until (if?) the market there improves.

If the OP doesn't have someone to watch the place (much easier w/ a condo than a house), s/he can hire a property management company. Like I said, it's a pain, but more ethical than giving it up to foreclosure and smarter than selling it off to one of these companies.

[Wellstone]

sounds like you just have a crap realtor who probably didn't go through all your options to sell in a down market like we have now. the first thing you needed to do was to pay out 3% so that there's a bigger incentive to other realtors to show your place and brind in as many prospective buyers as possible. it costs a little extra but if you are serious about selling, that's what it will take.

also i think you should talk to your realtor about lowering the price before just completely losing your butt by selling to the we buy ugly houses folks. the market is down but it hasn't completely dried up. there are buyers out there and your property needs to be listed competitively with other similar properties in the area. add in the incentives to other realtors and that's how you at least get some offers in.

also in hindsight since your move was job related, you could have had your company pick up the tab on relocation costs. probably a little late for that now.

[LeanneW]

We contacted Homevestors when we were desperate to sell our house in NE Mpls (this was about two years ago). They said they couldn't really help us and wouldn't say why. I finally pressed the rep for info, and he finally 'fessed up that the amount of money they would be able to offer us was embarrassingly below the market price.

I don't know - I got a really bad vibe from the rep we spoke with - he seemed shady. But ultimately, he was right - we couldn't afford to sell our house to them. We kept it on the market and continued working with our realtor and it did sell.

My advice? Ditch your realtor and find one who will actually work to sell your home. We had the same issue with ours - he really didn't care that much about us once he realized that we were no longer going to be in the Twin Cities area and would no longer be a potential client of his or his company's. Are you working with Keller Williams Realty by any chance? That was the company we worked with, and were extremely dissatisfied with the way they treated us as clients - for that reason!

[marmac]

with the dropping housing economy, even if you sell through another realtor it will probably feel like you sold to Homevestors.

[LM1]

The "We Buy Houses" types are usually looking for extremely cheap houses (regardless of the neighborhood) that can either be had for a song, or rehabbed on the cheap and flipped fast. If you have a nice condo or a home in a nice area and during the course of your conversation with them, don't come off as being a total drooling retard, often times, they won't even bother to make an offer, since they know you aren't going to sell your $250,000 place for $55,000.

If you need to sell it- badly- then you have to be prepared to take a hit on it.
Put an ad in the paper FSBO, price it $10-$15K below market and be done with it.
"We Buy Homes" guys are akin to pawn-brokers, auto-title loans and payday advance places. They prey on the desperate, the stupid and/or the financially illiterate. They don't run a business that revolves around transacting in multiple homes at fair prices and profiting off the volume- they make their business around finding that one or two people in dire circumstances (or, the suckers) every few months who are willing to sell their asset for a lot less than its worth.