A seller answered my third mailer on a house I logged eight months earlier and the spread was not what I expected
The ARV looked like $180,000 when I first logged it, peeling soffits, caved gutter, grass growing through the driveway cracks. Eight months later the seller called, and by then two houses on the same block had sold at $210,000 and $215,000. The spread I underwrote in my head the day I logged it assumed a $145,000 acquisition and a $30,000 renovation, which left reasonable room at the $180,000 number. At $210,000 the room looked better, but the seller had eight months to read the same comps, and he opened at $175,000. The renovation budget had not changed, and a structural surprise behind the garage wall pushed it closer to $42,000 once a contractor walked it. The deal that looked like a clean thirty spread on the day I drove past it was a fourteen spread by the time the seller called back, which is not a disaster but it is a different conversation than the one I had rehearsed. The assumption doing the most work when I logged the address was that the seller and I would negotiate against a $180,000 ceiling. The market moved the ceiling, and the seller noticed before I updated my file. Logging an address and revisiting the comp picture every ninety days costs almost nothing, and this case illustrates why the original drive-by number has a shelf life. What does your re-evaluation cadence look like on addresses you have already mailed but not yet contracted?
