OfflineIt seems to me that almost all buyers and sellers, including investors, have one thing in common, and that is they want more than they can get.
Buyers and/or investors want the most house for the LEAST AMOUNT OF MONEY.
Sellers want the MOST amount of money, regardless of the condition of their property and their circumstances, and most often this is because of an emotional attachment to their home. To them, it's not a house, real estate, numbers, etc., it's their HOME.
So, both the buyer and seller of a property almost always have UNREALISTIC expectations, and it's the job of real estate professionals to manage expectations (usually through education). I would never try to start investing on any kind of serious level without the coaching and help of investing professionals some of the posters here in this forum.
Live long and prosper,
"Rick in Amarillo," Real Estate Agent
Rick Allison, Realtor
Amarillo, Texas USA
Find comps, private lenders and cash buyers nationwide: www.TheRealEstate.PRO
Foreclosure and pre-foreclosure search engine: http://tinyurl.com/b6w7h6o
The People Helping People Movement: www.greatEPXsite.NET
The key then, is to find the odd situations where peoples expectations are wrong in the "other direction". I've seen people with unrealistic expectations where they didn't know their property was worth MORE than they were asking. I've seen properties where the owner knew, but didn't care because they had to move quickly.
I have bought a property where the owner just wanted to move, and had already purchased their next property. They new their property was worth more, but didn't have time to wait for it to sell for that higher price.
My younger brother, who I taught real estate to, just bought a house a year and a half ago from a seller in similar circumstances. They just needed to move, the property needed work, and they didn't have time to mess with it all. They dropped the price by $40,000.00 and my brother now has enough equity from his first deal to pay off his MBA.
All of this from people with expectations that didn't match MARKET STANDARDS.
The moral of this story, is that you look and look and look, and most of the time the people will act like Rick illustrated. We want the 1% or less of the time that people have unrealistic expectations that BENEFIT us.
Happy Hunting!