My Second Real Estate

My second deal was a sandwich lease option deal and a true nothing down, no credit needed, real estate deal. I rented the house from the seller with an option to buy, and rented the house to my buyer at a higher rent and a higher price to buy.

You may remember that I did an all cash deal for my first deal. It took several months before I entered my next deal. While I did speak to several sellers and received many leads I was short on cash to do my next deal. I have been self employed most of my life and haven’t had good credit for quite some time. I have paid my bills on time for several years but haven’t done well at obtaining the types of credit that strengthen ones credit scores. I had planned on borrowing out the cash I put into my first deal but was never satisfied with what loans I could receive against it and never did put a mortgage on that property.

About three months after the first deal this second deal of mine came about as a referral from a mortgage broker who had contacted me about selling his own property. This referral was a client of his who had to move from Memphis to Minneapolis due to a job transfer. The home was beautiful and required no work. The only money I spent on the house was to have the leaves bagged as it has a half acre lot with mature trees and a beautiful pie shaped lot with 80% of the yard being fenced in the back. The home is 4 to 5 bedrooms with 3 and a half baths with a very nice open floor plan and good solid construction. The area the property is in was being over built by new builders and used homes simply are not selling. The average selling price in our county is around $175k and this home had been on the market for $225k and not selling. Without all the overbuilding in the area it might be worth $245k or more.

When the seller contacted me they let me know they owed $215k and had an $1850 payment including taxes and insurance. All they wanted was to cover the note. I had taken Wendy Patton’s course on lease options and I knew that was a strategy I wanted to use. I agreed to cover the note once I had a suitable tenant/buyer and collected funds. I ran my first ads for the property in November which isn’t a great rental month. At first I tried to ask for a $6k option fee and $2195 per month rent. Had it been Feb or Mar I may have gotten it. I had little inquiry about the property. I had a yard sign with flyers and pictures online and ran ads in the local paper. Typically I got a call or two a week and had someone look at the property every couple of weeks. I had someone fill out the paperwork and seemed ready to pay their money twice and they couldn’t come up with the money and move in. Finally after almost 3 months I had a doctor and a nurse take the property with a $3000 non-refundable option fee and $1950 per month with a $100 credit for each month of on time rent. The agreed upon sales price was $249k which is the best part of the deal for me with a 24 month term on the lease. We did build in for the rent to go up to $2050 after 12 months. This tenant pays the rent on time almost every month and I think in the end they will likely buy the property. Most of the $3k option fee was eaten up with about $1500 in newspaper ads for the house. I make a $100 profit on the monthly rent. While I did spend about $1600 out of pocket I did get the $3000 up front. This is a very thin deal but if the current tenant doesn’t exercise the option I think I will be able to go up to $260k on the next tenant and get a bit more rent and option fee.

What you can learn from this deal: 1. I agreed to pay too much rent on this property. $1850 was too much and should have been more like $1600 per month so I could have made better cash flow. I think if I had held out another month I could have gotten more up front and a little more rent. A good rent guideline is to not pay the seller more than .6 times my selling price which would have been $1500 in this case. 2. We filed a memorandum of option on the property title. This shows the world that we have an interest in the property and it cannot be sold or refinanced without our approval. 3. This sandwich lease option only works if the seller has good credit and should continue to do so. 4. This property was really too expensive for a lease option and is much better in my market on a property that would sell between $100k and $200k. 5. It is hard to find sellers who will agree to this but there are lots of them out there, you just have to keep asking sellers to agree to this kind of deal. 6. Lease options are great for selling as you get tax benefits, and multiple paydays.