Too Good To Be True - Wins

You know what they say....
But surely there got to be times when it comes off.
Anybody willing to share a story of a positive outcome for an opportunity you were sceptical or over cautious about for a "too good to be true" situation, but went ahead anyway and came out well in front.
Sometimes its simply pure luck or good timing in a certain industry, but there may possibly be a success pattern over many cases.

Anyone care to share any details of a punt/deal/opportunity/even relationship that paid off?

Bought some land in 2012 that, on the face of it, could not be built on. Bought the land knowing that it would cost me a few grand to do all the title/boundary searches of bordering properties to establish whether there was a building entitlement (which, in all likelihood, there was not).

Lo and behold, subsequently discovered I had a case to request a building entitlement that had previously been extinguished, be reinstated. Kind hearted council agreed. Still waiting for it to come back from dept of planning, but hopefully should have my building entitlement by the end of the month. Yay!

Why risk it? There must have been something that made you go ahead... Mind sharing Lucy?

nhg said:

Why risk it? There must have been something that made you go ahead... Mind sharing Lucy?

Click to expand...

Significant financial gain I would suspect!

Nah, it was just a really lovely block. It was cheap and only a few km out of town. I hoped one day I'd be able to build on it but I figured even if I couldn't, we could live in town and just put stables, horses, fruit trees, etc. out there. I had a good feeling about it, but I didn't have any real reason to expect I'd find the building entitlement when I started looking. Other than the fact that it was a very old parcel of lots and I thought there could be some secrets in there somewhere (as sometimes happens when you go searching back through old system titles).

Buying a house in the Druitt has paid off. When I bought it, I got the typical reaction "why did you buy there". I don't seem to get it anymore, funny hat. Its nearly a 5x original value, so happy there

It is also good because one prior property investment went "stale" (but is now improving)

My sister bought a house. During negotiations there was another buyer who kept outbidding her. Until my sister stopped counter offering.

Magically the agent came back and said even though the other bidder was higher the older lady vendor thought my sister was nicer and wanted her to have the house.

I told her the other bidder probably didn't exist etc etc

A couple of years later we made a new friend who was the vendors niece. Turned out to be a true story after all.

A property developer claiming big returns but later that developer is happy with 100k return for over 18months of work, doing your homework always helps.

Bought a 1 bedroom flat less than 10k from Perth CBD in 2000.

Paid for it using the 7k FHOG that covered deposit, stamp duty, LMI and settlement costs.

A builder mate told me about the 2k REBA grant and used that to do a cosmetic reno.

Bought for asking price verbally in April, rented for 2 months then signed a contract on July 1 to be eligible for FHOG. Try before you buy kinda thing.

Lived there for three years, rented for three and then sold for triple what I paid for it.

I also became the strata manager and caretaker of the whole complex which taught me a lot.

Who says the government doesnt help the little guys

Bump for a great thread.

I tend to save mobile numbers of local agents I ever speak to in Western Sydney. We had been looking for a development site last year for months. Exactly knew what we wanted. On a fine morning in late August 2013, we decided that since market was moving fast, we'd buy any house in given the market was rising. Got ready to leave home around 8:55am...about to leave home to go see two houses in areas we weren't as keen on. Even got contracts for the two of them. Both were decent but apparently had a bit of interest. So I was about to go get ready...Mum was again looking at RE and came across a new listing in the area we wanted to buy in (the search didn't specify the area even, it was listed as a surrounding area search). There was no address on the ad. The agency don't put agent name, mobile numbers and only do privately booked open homes. I had never met the one approachable agent in the agency (other than the owner). So we called the office and got the address...Checked the LEP, checked the frontage etc...turned out to be 23m frontage, 734sqm land, duplex site.

I called the agent that I hadn't met ever...just had his number saved! And he happened to ring me back (despite a busy morning). I asked him if I could buy it on the phone. He said it wouldn't be fair to others who had booked time to see the property at 1pm that day. I was lamenting that the agent we did know at this agency had resigned. That other agent was really cool! So we got to the property and knew we wanted it. Waited a while. The agent was late. Turned out the agent who had left the business had been called to help them for the day! And there he was..we had a long good chat. The actual listing agent showed up. There were two other buyers to view the property. So we were the first ones through. We said to the agent we wanted it so he told us to go to his office and that he will show others as well and then come to his office.

He showed up around 15 minutes later. We went in and eventually decided on a price around $6,550 more than the asking price. The agent wondered if we were ready with all doco (legal) as it was a trust purchase. He took my licence and looked at the address which was Mount Druitt (first home purchase was in Mounty) and was a bit confused how we could buy this property given the "address" on the licence. Then he asked us how we came up with the trust name. We told him the trust name came from our humble beginnings and was the name of the complex where we first bought in late 2009. Also told him where we had gotten and how having moved to Australia 13 years ago we had decided that we were going to be good landlords. He was incredibly impressed and said it was hats off to us for shaping our life the way we had. Btw, we also signed a piece of paper that it was our best offer. Anyway, the conversation ended. He promised us he wasn't going to coach the other buyers waiting to sign the contracts.

We came home by 2pm or so. Waited till 6pm for agent's call. He said, that our offer wasn't the highest. It got me quite down. But he went on to add that he had told the vendors that we knew what we were doing. The vendors asked who he'd go with and he said he'd go with us.....

We were stoked. Never been happier about a purchase, we had done so much homework for . Apparently the other offer was $3,500 higher than ours! But the buyer started um'ing and ah'ing when he was asked about the finance.

The moral is, never double guess yourself infront of an agent..especially about finance. Btw, we had no pre-approval as we rarely do given we want to minimise credit hits.

The property is in EXCELLENT location. As per draft LEP in R3 zoning. But we can build detatched duplexes. The house is 800m from station, 900m to westfields, 500m to local shops and school, 1km to hospital, close to major roads etc.

The irony is, number 3 has featured a lot in all our purchases. This property is house number 3, the land size is divisible by 3, the price was divisible by 3. Superstitious I know...but it's true. Since we've been a bit more specific in our purchases. The next we purchased is not number 3, but we ensured the price we paid was divisible by 3.

P.S. We keep in touch with the agent now. When we first purchased from him, we caught up for lunch to say thank you for his integrity in the whole process. He knows the area inside out and is happy to go door knocking when we were wanted to do another purchase. I tried to help someone I knew to buy a listing of his. But to convince agents, you need to be really sure about what you want, do your homework and only communicate when you want to buy. No tyre kicking!

P.s.s. The property is worth 14% - 20% more than what we paid last August.

Bought a townhouse last year in 2770 - 2001 built.

Property came on the market on a Monday evening in April, our PM emailed us about it advising it was super cheap at $250,000.

I had a cold and was on sick leave, and was disappointed, as I was meant to be going for a job interview on Tuesday morning - which I had to postpone.

The following morning I went to see the agent with mum, and put down the holding deposit for pp of $250,000 (the agent put it under contract at that point). Whilst on my way I was really anxious, thinking the agent could have just put the ad up, and sold it to someone he knew already; or someone else would have made it to the agent's already (I went in at 10am!).

Signed the contract that week on Friday, and saw the property the first time on Saturday that week - had seen pictures of other properties sold in that complex.

As it was a mortgagee in possession, the bank had issues with the price, as the owner was trying to sell quick before the bank's involvement. The bank got the property valued at $265K - and I agreed to pay this as the market was crazy, and units were selling for this price. Settled in August due to the vendor bank issues (took about 4 months - but I thought it was too good to let go!).

I am happy that I was unwell, and no regrets about not going to the interview! The townhouse is up about 20% now since settlement.

Some time ago now, but back in the 80's I called in to see a friend of mine who was a real estate agent. As I walked into the office he was just hanging up the phone from getting an earful from a liquidator.

The liquidator had instructed him to auction off a small infill subdivision of 6 lots. The auction had been the weekend before and as it was the last asset to be sold the liquidator was keen to finish it up.

The highest bidder for one of the lots had informed the agent that they could not get finance, the liquidator was Very unimpressed and had asked what could my friend get for it in 48 hours. As the bidding had run up to $32k my mate says "$20k but give me a week and I could get $25-$28k for it."

Just sell the B***dy thing, $20k will do, just do it!

So I bought a block of land for $20K

(And now I will spend some of my profit from that land by going on a holiday to Canada, back in a few weeks)

I like this thread.

I secured a deal that did not hit the market and I knew it was very much undervalued, "too good to be true". It was on a Saturday, they were going to list it on Monday, I practically begged them to let me view it on that day.
I purchased this property on a corner lot for $550K, March 2014, bank re-valued it at $675K, and I just accessed the equity last week.

It gets better, currently calving up this block into 2 lots, from comparable sales in the area, I should achieve somewhere around $435-450K each and they fly out the door because the area is built up, vacant land scarce as hens teeth.

MTR

Was looking to buy my IP#1 towards end of 2012 in western suburbs beyond Blacktown. Every weekend went to all the inspections that I could reach between from Blacktown and St.Marys. Offers were rejected, lost couple of auctions and was planning to push the plans to next year as my 2 month annual leave was approaching soon.

One day, while returning back to Girraween (my PPOR) from one of those long inspection days, I saw an open-home board and it was just about to start. I had not considered Girraween suburb for IP, as the median prices were way beyond my IP purchase limit. I still went in to the open to get a feel of the market expecting a lot of foot traffic. Surprisingly, only 2 parties visited and I was the only investor. The agent was keen to sell to an investor. The asking price was high (450K) and I knew I would not stand a chance anyways, so gave a really lowball offer telling the agent that the house needed a lot of renovation. The agent was trying to get a better offer from me when the vendors returned and spoke to me. They asked to me add 15K to my offer. I mentioned that the property has a lot of defects and hence my offer. The vendor asked me to get the building and pest inspection done and then review my offer.
I booked the inspection for the day after. Vendor kept asking the inspector about all the issues the house had. As pedantic the inspectors are, he gave the vendor a detailed description on all the issues the house had including leaking from the bathroom.
Vendor thought I would back down, so as soon as the inspector left, he called me and said he is ready to accept 3k under what I had initially offered

I spent around 8K on it and rented in 2 days. I just got it valued and the price has increased around 40%.

That's my only win story so far.

It was 2011 and we were renting. We had personal debts to pay off at that time, so had no savings except 3k we received as tax refund. I was reading PI magazines and got interested in property and was familiar with a suburb because we helped two friends in viewing and buying property. Properties were selling at around 300k at that time.

I had done the calculations and knew that if we buy a property for 250-260k, the interest will be same as the rents we were paying.

Then we came across a 3x1 duplex half priced at 225k and it seemed too good to be true. We talked to another REA and he checked RPdata or something and told that it was sold for 270k in 2007. We knew some others were offering as well and offered 231k and offer got accepted. We borrowed 34k from friends and family, moved to another bank and settled in early 2012.

That house needed a new kitchen, bathroom upgrade etc which we did over a couple of years. We sold it after around 2 years and we got 80k after expenses. It was more than the net wages I earned over that period!

Late last year I came across a listing in Newcastle - 3 bedroom house asking for $239k. This was well below the suburb medium but there was a catch! You couldn't view the inside of the property as the tenants were away on holiday.

I took a gamble and put in a low-ball offer and managed to snag it for $225k. Found out later it was owned by a Rugby Leagues club and they just wanted to get rid of it.

When I finally got access to the property, my heart sank - the house needed alot more work than first thought. What I thought was a $25k reno was starting to look more like $50k.

In a strange twist of fate, after I settled but before the reno started some kids got into the property and completely trashed it. Insurance covered the majority of the damage and then some. The final reno costs only came to $28k.

2 weeks after the reno, the house was leased for $420 per week. A family paid $35 more than the asking price as they loved it so much.

3 months later the house was valued at $330k - managed to pull over $70k equity which funded two subsequent purchases in Brisbane

I attended an auction on behalf of my brother in law 7 weeks ago (he just settled last week).

There were two units for sale in the same block. One was upstairs and in a run down condition (tenanted). Other was downstairs and was just immaculate (owner occupied).

Brother in law and his wife liked the one downstairs, but thought the one upstairs might be cheaper due to its run down state.

Negotiated with the agent, got a price buy before auction price - felt it was too high, declined it.

Went to auction, there were a fair amount of people, didn't even get chance to bid for the upstairs one. Sold for $619k. (The buy it before auction price was less than this - i felt a bit upset by it).

Obviously brother in law and his wife were feeling rather down thinking they wouldn't be able to get into this market. I told them to go to the auction for the other place which was scheduled later in the afternoon. His wife refused and said "whats the point - its not like we can afford it".

I called him, he gave me the same story. I yelled at him and called up idiot and whole variety of colourful words for giving me the same sob story.

Anyway, made him go to the auction (his wife didnt attend - she went out with her friends). He won the property for $571k (this amount was less than what the buy before auction price for the upstairs unit).

The turn out at the afternoon auction was less than the morning one, guess most people got scared off by morning auction and had the same opinion as his wife.

Best part was probably that this was the unit they wanted more - and they got it for less! Instant equity!

I have a similar one to neK on an auction.

Last year, I was targeting Newcastle and was looking for midweek auctions, felt the market was moving but still could snag some good buys.

Came across two listings for auction on the same street, at the same time - 6:30PM on a Wednesday night! Couldn't believe my luck.

I was torn between which to pick but ended going with the one that needed more work but had a better plot of land, over 700 sqm.

The other place ended up selling for $245k and the auction I went to only had one other bidder. I went in pretty aggressively and got it for $195k. It needed $20k put into it and now leases for $285 per week to a lovely tenant.

Looking to pull equity from it and a few years later, knock it down and build duplexes.

Update on the above property in Newcastle, valuation came in this week at $305k.

So end numbers, purchased for $195k, reno for $20k and reval in 11 months at $305k