I wanted to tell the story of our “offer” that fell through, mostly because when I was looking to it myself on the old interwebs, I couldn’t find anything about the company that wanted to buy our house…so…here it is.
A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from our realtor, letting us know that she got an email with an offer for our house. Odd for a few reasons…one was that the offer was from a corporation, and another being they’d never even seen our house. They were based out of Illinois, and offered us about $15K less than our asking price. CASH. It even came with a proof of funding letter. Not horrible, but too low for us to accept. Our realtor told us the company’s name, IH2 Property Illinois, so of course I immediately started Googling. I found that they’re owned by Blackstone Group, one of the largest investment companies out there, and are purchasing mass quantities of single family homes across the country. They invest a little money, and then rent the homes out. Immediately the hubs was against even entertaining their offer. While we couldn’t find any information about people who had sold their homes to them, we did find a bunch of stuff on Yelp and other sites – mostly people who thought they were a shitty group of landlords. While I wasn’t exactly happy with selling my house that I love to a company that was seemingly a bunch of jerks…I also wanted to sell my house. (Duh.) And without much else coming in for serious interest in our home, I talked the hubs into a counter offer.
We countered $13K more than their offer, they countered back at the halfway point…which was exactly what we needed to break even on our home. We were STOKED. It was finally happening! We signed their offer with a counter-proposal addendum attached with the newly agreed upon purchase amount, and sent it to them. The next day, they scheduled an inspection. The inspector came and went, and it came to my attention that IH2 had never signed our counter-proposal, nor had they sent any earnest money. That started to worry me, but our realtor assured us that everything was fine, and would let us know when she heard anything. On that Friday, we had been told that the Purchase Agreement papers and the inspection report had been delivered to the buyers and we would hear something on Monday.
Meanwhile, the hubs and I are quietly and excitedly talking about our moving plans, storage units, when to start looking for our home. We both tried not to get excited – we knew this wasn’t finished yet.
Monday rolls around, and finally, by 2pm our realtor calls. Her first words are “Bad news.” I almost fainted. Like, this COULD NOT be happening. Instead of everything being fine, they countered again. This time, at $30K LESS than our agreed upon purchase amount. THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS LESS. May I remind you that our agreed upon amount would leave us with nothing. Breaking even…but walking away with NOTHING. At first I panicked and thought that there was something MAJORLY wrong with our house. What could need $30K in repairs?!
Our realtor emailed their local agent (along with a counter from us for $10K than our agreed upon amount, because EFF YOU JERKS) who responded that they could not work with our counter offer, and that it was nothing that was found during the inspection, but they determined they would need to invest that much in the home in order for the deal to work with them. Okay…first? GREAT! Put $30K of work into my house! Guess what? I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY FOR IT. Second? I hate you. He also mentioned in the email that if we ever want to “work with their offer” to contact them. Sure…when I have a dump truck of money for closing, I’ll give you guys a holler.
So…like I said in my previous post…dead in the water.
We’re pulling our house from the MLS on Thursday while we’re on vacation, and so that we can enjoy the rest of the summer without having to worry about house showings and stress and whatnot. We’ll probably decide over the next week if we put it back up again in September or wait until Spring.
I’m so over all of this. I’m seriously going to find a statue of St. Joseph and bury that shit in my front yard. HOUSE BE GONE.
I was able to sell my house in SLP to this group.. they came only 4 grand less than what i was asking.. i also cursed st joseph.. it was weird that there was no information about them anywhere
The same thing just happened to us with IH2- except they extended their due diligence, and waited until 10 days before we were supposed to close to come back with their low ball offer (16K less). They did NO inspections on our home- apparently just decided they didn’t want to pay what they agreed to. Then they wanted to extend due diligence, do inspections and negotiate again after that. At that point, we were in a contingency contract to buy another house. I wonder how many people they are doing this to…
It would appear they are doing the same thing to us right now. They had 14 business days to get an inspection and never did. Now they are extending due diligence and I’m guessing they will back out.
It seems to me their “inspectors” are actually just boots on the ground who use that excuse to get into a home and get a look once they’ve got someone who has accepted an offer. If they don’t like the amount they think they need to invest, or the neighborhood, or the house itself, they can cut bait since they’ve signed nothing.
I also find it interesting that you were are against doing business with this kind of buyer until they offered to “show you the money”. Amusing – I understand folks are motivated money in the end, especially if you’re pulling up stakes with the area anyway. However, entities like these purchasing properties in a residential (owned, not leased/rented) area are bad news for the people who live in these areas and are not selling. If you’re selling, you MAY stand to get a higher sale price, but if you live (and intend to stay) in your home in one of these areas, you’ve basically got an landlord in the neighborhood who has no ties to the area nor is anywhere near it. If you’re lucky, they’ll have a proactive property manager.
Long-term, this kind of property, more often than not, will depress home values in a neighborhood. This in turn, guarantees the LLC will not sell because they’ll not make money on the sale, and they can keep renting, which is their primary revenue stream anyway. If you’re a property owner in an area like this, the best you can hope for is that the LLC can’t get the rent they’re asking for and pull up stakes and sell the property to an individual owner with a vested interest in the neighborhood.
I was looking for a rental property and got a reply from a Mendi Dusterhoft who stated he had a home on Columbus Have S Minneapolis, MN for rent for $700.(for a 3bdrm mind you). Then I start getting the story about him being in Nigeria for work blah, blah, blah. You know the deal with those. So I started doing some serious digging and find out the home was purchased May 2013 by IH2 Property Illinois LP, but the taxpayer is some other business from Phoenix, AZ. So I don’t know what their while scam is, but renter, seller, anyone doing any business with them beware!
Hi Miss Jenna!
First– don’t look at this website, it’s still very much a work in progres… it turns out that being a full-time realtor, mom of 3 little ones, AND having to maintain/create a website isn’t all the easy… who would’ve guessed:) But my FB page is decent: #/CaraStraussRealtor
Anyway, I found your blog because I was doing some research for a client; comping out their current home and found one currently active home on the their block that’s priced considerably lower than the other ones that have sold. I dug a little deeper: it’s not a foreclosure, the seller’s disclosure is just a waiver, so I looked into the listing history and sure enough it’s owned by this H1N1 group
I googled them, and your blog was the most information I could find! So thank you for going that extra mile… I’m sure it really matters much in this case, I just hope it doesn’t effect the sales price for my clients.
In general though, as a Realtor I’ve had good experiences with these companies and, like yours, not so good ones. Generally it should really be on your agent to vet all offers. When I get an offer for a client, we look at the price and terms (duh!) and I also make sure I’m comfortable with the lender, and feel that it’s a legit buyer/offer. I wouldn’t even permit an inspection to take place until after all contracts have been signed by all parties. Unfortunately there is nothing stopping the buyer from coming back with an a-hole counter offer because of “inspection”…
I hope the rest of your summer is going well and you’re enjoying it– it’s WAY TOO SHORT here in MN not too:) If you’re not still signed with your agent, you can feel free to give me a call or email if you have any questions. Otherwise, GOOD LUCK!!!