Two down units were on the rent roll as renovated. That paid me $96k.

The bids are the part I want to understand. How do you get three GCs to price 28 units and two roofs in under three weeks on a property you don't own? I can barely get a callback for a real job. Did you tell them it was a contract you might assign, or did you just let them assume?

What was the seller's alternative? A property that already fell out of contract once, half the rent roll fiction, master metered water. If they had six months of patience they could have turned the two units and re-listed at a real number. Something made them not want to wait and that's usually the whole story of the discount.

Down units carried on a rent roll at market rent is so common on the management side that I stopped calling it fraud and started calling it Tuesday. Half the time the owner isn't lying on purpose, the on-site person entered a target rent when the unit went vacant and nobody ever cleaned it up.

harrow, did you pull estoppels or just the walk? On 28 units at this size a lot of sellers won't chase tenant signatures, and the walk plus twelve months of bank deposits gets you most of the way. But if any of those leases had concessions written on a side sheet you'd never see it in either document.

The credit against your fee is the interesting mechanic. Your buyer chose to eat $24k out of your pocket rather than reopen price with the seller, which tells me their debt was already sized off the $2.47m and they didn't want to re-trip anything on the loan side. Bridge, I'd guess, given aluminum wiring and two down units.

harrow, was your fee inside or outside the purchase price on their lender's file? Lenders differ on whether an assignment fee counts in basis for LTC purposes and some want the assignment agreement in the file, so anybody copying this should get their buyer's lender to say in writing how they treat it before the fee is negotiated.

How did you know the $85k ask was a negotiation and not a real objection? I'd have panicked and split it.

ember, he knew because he'd already put the pigtail bid in the package. Once you've handed a buyer a priced solution to the thing they're complaining about, the complaint is about money and everyone knows it.

harrow, the question I actually have is the deposit. $25k hard on day 31, buyer closes 15 days after that. If they walk on day 12 of that 15 you're holding a hard deposit on a 28 unit you can't fund. What was the backup? One operator with 600 units in the state is not a buyer list, it's a buyer.

$30k a unit average on the middle bid for a 1978 turn plus two roofs feels tight to me unless the units are small and the plumbing is copper. Aluminum branch wiring alone runs real money once you're pigtailing every device in every unit and an inspector decides to look at panels. Did the bids include panel replacement or just device-level connectors? That's the line where $845k becomes $1.1m.

Also curious whether the buyer's GC came in near your numbers. If they came in 20% over, your bids were the anchor and you got lucky that they wanted the deal more than they wanted the argument.

On the water: master metered with no reimbursement language is a real hit, not a talking point. Converting to a ratio billing setup depends on state law and sometimes on local ordinance, some states restrict how you allocate and what you can charge as an administrative fee, so the buyer's underwriting of that line is only as good as their attorney's read in that state. If they penciled in full recovery from month one they're going to be disappointed.

The part I'd press on is entity and paper. Who held the contract, and did the assignment run through the same entity that signed with the seller? On a consent-required PSA I've seen sellers argue an entity assignment is a different animal than a contract assignment, and "consent not unreasonably withheld" is a phrase that means whatever a judge later says it means.

girder, agreed on the panels. harrow, if your bids had come in at $1.1m instead of $845k, does the deal still assign at $2.47m or do you go back to the seller? I suspect you'd have found out the consent clause wasn't as friendly as it read.

Sourcing question, because that's where I'm stuck. You said second cycle on a lightly marketed listing. Are you watching brokers for fallout, or did someone call you? I have six months of reading and no idea how to be the person who hears about a deal that just died.

Looking at this thread, harrow's edge was the ability to price the work, not anything about wholesaling. Anyone can call a broker. Almost nobody can get three GCs to a real number in three weeks and then defend it against a buyer's contractor.

Which is discouraging for me, since I don't have that. harrow, would you have touched this deal without the scope background? Or is the real answer that you'd have taken the $85k retrade because you'd have had no basis to say no?

Walking all 28 units with the maintenance guy is the only line in this post I can actually copy tomorrow, so thanks for that.