The Property:
We purchased a single family residence that needed $42,000 worth of work to make it worth market value.

The Find:
We were knocking on doors in one of our areas of expertise.  We knocked on the neighbors’ door and they referred us to the most unattractive home on the street.  The neighbor explained that this home had been home vacant for the last two years.  We went by the vacant home and realized it needed a lot of work.  We knew fixed up homes in the area were selling for $135,000 to $155,000.  We sent a letter with the words Return Address Request on it, letting the owner know that we were interested in buying this home.  We received the letter back in the mail with the updated mailing address of the home owner who was located out of state.  We resent the letter to the owner and received a call about three weeks later.

The Technique:
We located a distressed seller in a nice neighborhood who wanted to sell.  The seller wanted $75,000 for the purchase of this property.  After collecting our bids for the work to be performed on this property, we knew it would take over $40,000 to fix-up this property.  With that in mind, we did not want to spend more than $65,000 to acquire this property.  This would allow us to fix the property and sell it with a profit of $25,000.

The Contract:
We wrote a standard Real Estate Purchase Contract with a cash purchase of $65,000 and a quick close of two weeks after our Buyer Inspection Period.  The seller countered with a $75,000 purchase price.  We told the seller that we would not be interested in purchasing this property at that price.  Three days later, the seller called us to see if we would buy the property for $72,000.  We politely told him we had no interest in the property at this price based on the fact of how much it was going to cost us to do the fix-up.  One week later, the seller called us and again asked us if we would buy the property for $72,000.  We once again said we would not buy it at this price, but that we would buy it for $68,000.  He said that this price was too low and hung up.  One week later, the seller called and said he agreed to the sales price of $68,000.

The Result:
We purchased the property and immediately put it on the market for $109,900 using our Flixer technique.  We started the fix-up work on the property redoing the roof, windows and stucco coat.  We received an offer for full purchase price 24 hours after we listed the property. The buyers asked us to finish a few other things on this property and we were able to sell the property for $111,664.  After paying a buyer agent commission, our profit was over $24,000.   Using the Flixer technique, we were able to realize the same profit we would have if we had finished the project before selling it.  We were able to profit sooner!