No Stupid Questions

Whenever I get any of those contacts, I ask for about 150k more than the absolute max I could get for it (150k.. is about half of the total sellable price). Sight unseen, as-is.

I’d take that deal, but they usually don’t reply :(. Did have one guy ask if there was a pool in the basement to justify the price. Told him he’d have to buy it to find out.

In reality it needs a lot of expensive work I’d rather not pay to do (re-wiring, ripping out the cracked lathe and plaster walls and drywalling, kitchen remodel, etc) and they would be piiiiiiised when they took possession ;)

I have never heard of this one before.

I always ask for about 3x my estimated tax value. They ask why, and I tell them that I want to but another house that isn't falling down around me.

Yes they do and the answer is old people being taken advantage of

they are thousands of independent investors, sometimes known as homevestors.com they seek around for homes in disrepair or hoarders or abandoned type. they will cold call and try to make friends to figure out the house situation and why its in a sorry state. they are very patient and understanding, and make clear how the house couldnt be sold through a market listing without major time and expense, and get into detail about all the effort that would be required. then they offer to pay cash off market as-is to take care of everything. typically they aim to calculate the cost required to get it sellable and then make $50-100k profit for the trouble. its a real business that serves a market need to get these homes utilized.

but they hire cold callers to read scripts and bother millions of people to find someone with pain about a house.

these people end up only making a handful of deals a year and sometime lose due to bad timing or unforeseen problems.

The biggest victims of phone scams are the elderly. Typically very socially isolated, lonely, and sometimes suffering from cognitive decline. Does anyone ever fall for it? You've got to ask yourself why the scammers would go through so much trouble if it never worked.

These absurd scams confused the hell outta me forever. Like are there really idiots falling for this tripe????? Then I read an article. It goes something like this. Hi there maggie, this is michael jackson, id like to marry you and mail you 10 gobzillion dollars today, you in?????

The answer is 1/10,000 is stupid enough to fall for this and the scammers want 10,000 people to instantly reject their absurd claim. Those people would just waste their time. Its intentionally absurd to ferret out that one person in 10,000. Someone who believes you are deceased michael jackson who is in love with them? Thats a big fish on the line, a real rube, someone who will empty their bank account for you. Sadly, in reality its probably the elderly, lonely, mentally incapacitated, or folks lobotomized by religion. They are scumbags seeking rip off the vulnerable.

They're exclusively targeting people who don't know how much their property is worth. Usually people in transitioning neighborhoods who bought their home 40 years ago for $10k, who don't know that their property alone is worth $200k today and will happily take $80k cash from some rando on the phone because they think the 800% return is a great deal.

I've lived in neighborhoods like that for a while. The phone calls we receive are insane; in our old house, which we knew was worth $300k because we had just had it appraised to put it on the market, the guy on the phone offered us $65k sight unseen. I was like, "if you even took the twelve seconds to look at this property on Street View you'd know why that is a laughable idea."

He way over-valued our home. It was a site unseen offer based on homes in the area. It was in need of major repairs that would make it difficult to sell on the market. Our realtor ended up buying it from us and then doing a huge renovation on it. She sold it for about double what the guy offered, but had to sink substantial funds into it that I just didn't have.

We sold our house last year and did work with one of those guys to at least get an idea of value and then went with a realtor and made about 30% more than the cash offer guy.

Ooh I answered one of those at my grandparents once. Kept em going for a good 5 minutes before telling them I don't own a house. They hung up on me.

My in-laws are considering selling an undeveloped property they own after being contacted that way.

Sometimes they just really are giving away a MASSIVE YACHT!