The seller accepted an offer at 79 percent of ARV and the deal still made sense on paper
The part worth sharing is why: the payoff came in 11k lower than the reinstatement figure the seller had been quoting for three weeks, and that gap is where the margin actually lived. A lot of pre-foreclosure buyers model to the reinstatement number because that is the figure the seller knows and repeats. The payoff demand from the servicer is a different document with a different expiration clock, and until it arrives you do not actually know what you are buying. In this case the delta between the two figures covered the holding costs entirely. The seller had been told by someone, possibly a neighbor, possibly a relative, that reinstatement and payoff meant the same thing, and nobody corrected it until the title company pulled the demand. The offer was written with a contingency on payoff confirmation and a 72-hour response window from the servicer, which is the mechanism that made the timeline work. Without that clause the buyer would have been committed to a number that was 11k too high and the deal would have broken at assignment. What does your offer language look like when the payoff has not arrived yet?
