Why You MUST Always Inspect Properties in Wholesaling

Ever wonder what it looks like to go see a house before you make a cash offer? Well, in today's episode of Painless Flipping, I'm about to take you through an eye-opening journey. I'm talking to a seller who's eager to sell, and he assures me that the house is in pristine condition. He says it looks great. I usually don't go see houses because I buy homes over the phone virtually, but I decided to go take a look at this house because it was close to my office, and I thought it was worth going to see the house because the seller didn't live locally. He was a landlord that lived in Vegas, and his property was here in Utah where I live. But when I went to go see the house, what I found— hard to describe. So that's why I'm going to take you through this journey of why it's important to go see houses and what you can find. Trust me when I say this one is for the record books. Stick around to the end of the video to see how this unforgettable story unfolds and whether I ended up getting a deal of a lifetime or ended up walking away from the house because it was so disgusting. But before we dive into the story, do me a favor and subscribe to the channel real quick. Our story begins with a seller that insisted that his property was a hidden gem. As I was talking to him on the phone, I asked him about the necessary things for me to know if it was a deal that I should pursue or not. I asked him about the condition of the property, the motivation, why he was selling, his timeline, and his asking price. His asking price was a little high, but these days everybody's asking price is high. They all want as much as they can get for the property, and usually you have to go dive in deeper into the conversation to find out if the house needs work and all that. So I asked him, Hey, tell me a little bit about the condition. He said, oh, it just needs a little bit of carpet and paint. But I was kind of sensing there was something there maybe he wasn't telling me. So I asked him a little bit more about the situation. He told me there was a tenant involved. It was a rental property for him, and he lived in Las Vegas, and he just wanted to sell this house for an investment so he could get his money out and invest it in something else. Usually I wouldn't go see the house because I negotiate over the phone, and I don't want to drive all the way out there to waste my time and, you know, see a property that he says is in good condition. It would be a waste of my time. So it's better for me just to kind of get a ballpark and make him an offer. But he said, look, there's a lot of people going. And again, I thought something— there was a hunch I had. I felt like there was something going on there that maybe I should go check out the property. It's not that far from my office and see what's going on. So I decided to investigate. So I hopped in my car and drove all the way down to see the property with the idea, with the expectation that it might be in worse condition than he thought. And that usually happens when there's landlords that don't live in the state and don't go see the property very often. Tenants usually neglect the property, and especially if he wants to sell for cash as is fast, there's got to be something behind it.

This is an situation, very hard to develop rapport with the seller over the phone, wants way too much. And I thought this would be a good opportunity to show him, hey, I'm willing to go to the house, show him that, you know, I'm a real investor. I think I can set myself apart from the other investors that way. After seeing the house, then I can make him multiple offers, you know, if I can buy it for cash, if I can buy it on terms, if we can do an ovation, we partner on the property together and do a flip together, a lot of different options. But you're going to see a house, you need to determine Okay, is it worth my time? Is the seller really going to sell? Is there motivation? If it's someone that's just like, yeah, I'm going to list it if I don't get what I want, or there's like, I'm just going to keep it if I don't get what I want, that's another reason not to go see the house because you can just give them a low range and see what they say to that. But anyway, that's kind of in a nutshell what we're going to do today by seeing this house.

So curiosity got the better part of me, so I went and saw the property. And you won't believe what I saw. I pull up to the property and I get an unexpected surprise. As I'm pulling up to the property, I see someone standing outside of the door of the property. I assume it's the seller who, from Vegas, maybe he flew out there. So not only did I see someone standing in front of the property, I saw an older gentleman, white-haired gentleman, old guy standing talking to him. So I said, oh man, this must be another buyer. He must have scheduled multiple buyers at one time to walk through. This is kind of awkward. This doesn't really happen very often. The seller probably did it like this because he's not local and he just told us to buy all at the same time. All good. So I walk up to the buyer, I walk up to the person that's standing in front of the door. I find out that it's the tenant and he doesn't want us to come in. He's like, oh guys, it's really messy, I don't want you to come in. I turn over and look at the old man and he's like, yeah, I'm coming to see the house and also I'm bringing one of my buyers too. He was a broker, he was looking to bring one of his buyers and show them the property. Now I said to him, hey, that's totally fine. How about we do this? How about you go see the house first so I don't get in your way, and then once you go, I can go look at it because I also wanted to get some footage of the house so I could record it, not only have it for this video, but also so I could run my numbers and send it to my buyers.

Are you Jeff?

Nathan. Nathan? Yeah.

Is this Michael? Are you Michael? I am not. Oh, you're not? Unfortunately, I think it's a double showing at the same time. Oh, it's okay. So what's, what's kind of the situation on it?

Like, are you moving out of here?

He's deciding to sell it or? Yeah, he's had his own health issues. He's been amazing to work with. Right. Yeah.

So the tenant again doesn't want us to come in, but finally, reluctantly, he's like, fine. He lets the other buyer go in and I stay on the outside looking at the property. I take a look to see if there's any damage. The house needed paint and needed quite a few things on the exterior. So I wait about 5, 10 minutes and wait for the other buyer to come out. And he finally eventually does with the person that he brought. And, you know, he's got a look of disgust on his face. So I go up to him. I said, you know, how's the property? What are you guys thinking about being around? He doesn't want to tell me what he's going to offer. But so I just throw it out there. I say, hey, I ran my numbers. This house is probably worth about $500,000 fixed up if it's not not too bad. I probably could get away with about $380,000 or $400,000, put some money into it and resell it and make a, you know, flip it. The guy laughs a little bit, both of them laugh, and they look at me like, no, this thing needs to be around $300,000, the low $300,000s. I was shocked because according to the landlord, the person that was selling the house, he said it was in decent condition. So I'm kind of wondering what I'm gonna get. So finally it was my time to see the house and I was ready to go, not knowing what I would see. Finally got in the house and I just saw a bunch of stuff everywhere. I just saw garbage, I saw stuff, and it wasn't that crazy. At the beginning when I walked in the front. I was like, okay, it's just a little messy, no problem. Then he takes me from the kitchen— the kitchen needed to be worked on— he takes me to the garage. The garage is stacked full of stuff, and the tenant's like, hey, look, they used to be twice as full as this. I've taken— I think he said 30 tons, he said some crazy numbers— like, I've taken 2 or 3 tons to the dump already. So this was a lot more than you're seeing right now. I was like, okay. So he takes me through the kitchen. I'm seeing the kitchen needs to be done, the floors need to be done, pretty much everything I've seen so far needs to be done. He takes me upstairs. I see a big old hole in the ceiling. There's a big hole in the ceiling where the swamp cooler has been leaking. No AC, just a swamp cooler. Wow. I'm like, okay, there's already a lot of work I can see. New floor needs to be done. He takes me to the bathroom. This is when I start getting a little shocked. I'm a little shook at this moment because as I walk into the bathroom, I see something that shocks me. I see poop in the shower tub, in the bathtub. There's actual poop. There's actual poop in the bathtub. And I'm like, what's going on here? This is getting a little crazy. And, you know, as I walk through, I'm starting to notice a little bit more poop everywhere. I'm like, why is there poop everywhere in this house? And by the way, I'm not saying all this to roast this guy. You know, I'm not here to say anything bad about him. I'm just saying this is what I found out. And this is the same house that the seller who was saying he wanted a lot for his house and it was in decent condition. I'm sure he knew about it. But anyway, I walked to the other bathroom. In the bathtub, it's nasty. Looks like it hasn't been cleaned in years. So I walk down Back down the stairs, and I notice— this is when I really notice that there's 8 dogs in the backyard, all behind, you know, the sliding glass door. And then I see a couple cats running around, and it all clicks. They just have a ton of pets that they have not cleaned the poop. They have not cleaned these, these pets for I don't know how long, months. So I don't know why I need to see anymore. I don't really need to see much more, but I, out of respect, I wasn't saying anything disrespectful. I walked downstairs, poop everywhere. And we get into the basement, literally rooms full of poop. There's poop on the window sills, poop on the floor. I'm having to like walk, it's dried. It's, it's— I'm sorry, I I don't want to get too deep into it, but it was just— it was intense. I've never been in a house that's had people living in it, unfortunately living in it, that had poop everywhere. Now I walk up and I know there's something deeper here. There's a big problem. So I asked the tenant, I said, hey, I'm really sorry, sounds like you got a lot going on. Like, you want to tell me what's going on? Like, is there anything I can help you with? He tells me unfortunately that, you know, his wife just left him, he just lost his job, he's depressed, he doesn't have any money, he's behind on rent for 2 months. So now we're finding out that this is a way bigger problem than you know, I originally anticipated, or what I even thought from talking to the seller. Seller played it all cool. He was like, oh, this is all good. So the tenant tells me he's behind, and I say, look, if I buy this house, I can't keep you in here. Unfortunately, you're not paying rent. He's like, yeah, just give me 2 months and, you know, I'll be out of here. I'm really sorry. He was really sad, and I offered help because, again, this is sad. This is not to roast the man for having a house that was really dirty. There's obviously a lot of animals, hard to take care of, and he's going through a lot. So I had empathy for him. I was like, man, how can I help? And, you know, eventually I was like, hey, before I go, you know, is there anything I can do for you? He let me know that the church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that I belong to, is actually the neighborhood that he was in. They were trying to help, they were helping him with food, and they were helping him in any way they could. So anyway, I leave the property and I'm just shocked. I'm like, wow, the numbers that I ran on this house don't make sense. Obviously what he was asking, he was asking about for $415,000. My numbers needed to be around like $400,000, like for it to make sense in a good condition. But this house was not in a good condition, everybody.

Mm-hmm.