I do not know specifically why he was selling the property. I asked my realtor to ask him a few times, but he never got an answer. He originally bought the property for $95k about three years ago, but he put a lot of work into it. He may have been tired of the property or may just have finished re-habbing the property. With all the bad news on real estate, he may not have been able to get as many buyers, or he was probably spooked by all the negative news. He also was keen on closing before the end of the year (and so the closing date is on December 28). Why he wanted that, I do not know…

In any case, he was asking for way too much ($139.9k) and we worked him down. My original offer was $110k and we prodded him down using comparables in the neighborhood. Also, we were in no rush and we were looking at 15 other properties with similar numbers. Finally he came back to us, asked if we would go up a little and we did.

I have to look at what I posted in the other topic post, but I think I calc’d out $300 per month cash flow, a return on equity of 43%, and a cash on cash of 18%. The total closing costs are estimated at around $12k (which reminds me, I have to put together that money…).