heheheheh –

I know these people. I met with them 2 weeks ago for a listing appointment. They are a VERY nice young couple. Anyways they were quite disappointed at the pricing I recommended for them. I advised them that they should interview other agents and see what they said. They settled with Coldwell Banker and she is a good agent. Hopefully they will not lose to much money. The problem like all other problems is if you look at the comps when they bought the home in 2005, they kind of didn’t do the proper homework.

The home is on Diamond in between Jewell and Lamont… The couple that bought it had plans to redevelop it originally.

eq – I am not sure what sort of development plans they had…Either way (in my opinion) it was a bonehead investment and they are a typical example of people doing something that they shouldn’t have done….

Funny though because the owner called me this morning with a bunch of questions.

So it turns out that it is a short sale. The spoke to the bank last week who referred them to Coldwell Banker. The seller though was really concerned about the short sale and asked me if I knew about short sales. She called me cuz she felt that she had not received as much information on the process as she would have liked.

It turns out neither the realtor nor the lender told her about the tax liability of the short sale. Since they have 2 mortgages she had no clue about first position or anything like that. She said the realtor and the lender gave her and her husband a bunch of stuff to sign, most of which she didn’t understand.

It was all really sad to hear as these are nice, but naive people.

I told her that she should get a copy of everything she signed, and bring all of the unsigned docs to her attorney and her CPA. I also said that she should work with her realtor and tell her realtor that she needs more explanation on these sorts of issues. I have heard of her realtor and I believe she is a good realtor, perhaps she just needs to be a bit more thorough in her explanation of how things work with these particular sellers.

An experienced developer could most likely do something. It is real thin lot. It would not be an easy development either. They have no parking, nor is there any alley access behind the lot. So it would seem to me that if they were gonna build a duplex they would need to scrape the home, dig out the lot for underground parking and build. Perhaps they could get away with parking in the front of the lot and push the residence to the back. They would also have to watch out for density limitations.

Either way it is definitely not a job for beginners.

The agent that represented them was Kelly, an HUS franchise owner… I know him as well and he is generally a good guy… however I will admit this was not a good deal for these people…specially if you look at how long the home was on the market when they bought it. Shame on him…

BTW – the zoning for this particular property is RM-1-1 which allows 1 unit per 3,000 sq. ft. lot size. Cannot build a duplex without a zoning variance and with setbacks and parking restrictions I would doubt its possible in any case.