When a signed contract is not

Yesterday I talked about the roller coaster ride real estate can and will give you. Today I want to tell you about a deal that was not a deal.

In our business we spend a lot of time and money on marketing to get sellers to call us. We got one such seller - actually a husband and wife team. They were selling an office building that we were looking at to move our office to. It looked perfect. We made our initial offer and they accepted it after much negotiating. We started on the closing process when I got a call from the husband and he wanted to talk about the offer. We went that morning and met with them. They said that after thinking about it they wanted to change the offer. They wanted more money down and more monthly payment (they were providing seller financing). Again after more negotiating we came to terms again and we modified the offer. We increased the monthly payment by did not provide more money down. Again the contract was signed and we continued with the closing process.

We were two days away from closing on the property when the seller called again and wanted to cancel the deal. They had talked to a number of people and they all told the seller that they should have gotten more money down and more monthly payment. So because of that they wanted to cancel unless we increased our down payment. I had a signed contract and I could have forced the sale. But I took it to mean that we were not meant to have that property and we canceled the deal and I was off the roller coaster ride. I was up when we signed the deal and down when they called to change the terms and up again when we resigned the deal and down when they canceled. We gave them a great price and they did not take it. I believe they will call us back in the months ahead and on that day it will be my terms and price and no roller coaster ride.

See Ya,
Mike