Bargain Basement House Hunting Part 1

This is the transcript of podcast done with Marita DeCarlo, from ADK Realty based in Toms River, New Jersey and Anthony DiMaio, author and real estate blogger.

Anthony DiMaio: Marita, after looking at one of your Just Sold properties, I noticed that the home sold for an unusually low price. The average home in New Jersey, you know, is in the $300,000 range. And it seemed like this one sold for $35,000, is that what it was?
Marita DeCarlo: Yes, that is right. But this is what they call a quad. It’s in the 55-and-older community, and there are four units to a building; it’s a co-op. Buyers who have recently sold ideally look for something easier to maintain, and of course, something cheaper than the selling price of where they were moving from. When you’re downsizing this is a perfect situation. But now they are going for a lot more these days because of the way the market is. So $35,000 is actually a very good price for a two-bedroom quad at this point, you know.
AD: Sure.
MD: And yes, it was a really good buy. I had just sold another one the week before for $45,000, which, you know, a couple of years ago, both of these prices would be high.
AD: Wow. So now the one last week closed for $45,000, and then this one was $35,000. So how do you coach your buyers as to what they need to be doing to get these outrageous deals? And what do you coach your sellers as to what they need to be doing? Which one do you want to take first, your buyers or your sellers?
MD: Well, the one we sold for $45,000 I represented the seller. And what we had discussed was making sure the inside was as cleared out as possible, having a few pieces of furniture, keeping it clean, get the clutter out, make it presentable where, you know, people might have an idea of what belonged where. Make sure to make the kitchen look nice or where the table could be placed.
The one that sold for $45,000 was a little smaller than the one that was purchased for $35,000; it was cleaner-looking and empty and, you know, it was easy for people to come in and say, ‘I know what to do with this.’ And so we had multiple offers and, you know, the client was lucky that she was able to have the higher offer at $45,000 and took it. This was the unit where she bought it for considerably less.
AD: That’s great.
MD: But the other unit which closed at $34,900, for my buyer, was again the same thing. It was a quad; two bedrooms, one bath. But when you walked in, the house was just full of clutter, full. There wasn’t wall space that was free. A lot of people would have walked right out. And so I was able to advise my client to try to see past these things. Some people don’t have the option or the luxury to get everything out. They don’t have any place to put their furniture while they are cleaning out the space.
AD: Yeah.
MD: And you have to be able to look past that. And so they did and were able to close on the property for an incredible price. They didn’t want to actually go with our offer at $35,000 because they felt it was lower. This is the time when everybody’s going over. But nobody else was biting, so they took it.
AD: So let me ask you another strange question for this kind of super-hot market, “Are there other properties available at these rock-bottom prices in New Jersey?
MD: There’s not an abundance of any kind of property right now in New Jersey, as you may know. This is why the market is so crazy. It seems that as fast as they go on the market, they are going off, you know. We are selling them one right after another. There’s nothing I put on the market that lasted more than three days without having multiple offers and being under contract.
AD: But you told me on the call just now that you had two properties that sold, one for $45,000 and the other for $35,000. If someone came to you, do you have other properties that you think are somewhere in this area?
MD: Yeah, there’s always properties popping up and, you know, we constantly see on the MLS what’s coming up, and also talking with other agents, where we know that if a property is coming on the market soon, they’re just getting it ready. The trick is to be ready to pounce on the property.
AD: Gotcha.