Smokey And The Bandit Sign

What was supposed to be a simple flip, turned into a race against time. LOL.

The Movie

For those of you who don’t know about the movie from 1977, “Smokey and The Bandit”, you really don’t know what you’ve missed. Burt Reynolds, look for the guy with the cool, giant mustache on IMDB, is dared to pick up a truck load of beer and return it to the people that dared him. It seemed simple enough and he accepted…only to end up running into trouble and having quite the adventure.

My Adventure

First, a little insight into what my story involves. This took place within my first year of flipping houses, so it was many years ago so I’ll do my best to remember all of the exact details.

— The Bandit —

My adventure didn’t involve a truckload of beer (though I could have used one after it was all over), but did involve a bandit and a dare (sort of). A bandit sign that is. If you don’t know what a bandit sign is, I have a picture of one of my bandit signs posted on a telephone pole here.

These signs are an awesome way to generate leads from motivated sellers quickly and very inexpensively. It’s important to place them where they will be seen by a lot of people and in areas you want to buy houses.

The bandit sign involved in this adventure was place with a wire stake in the grass along a highway exit ramp (I had actually ‘planted’ 3 or 4 signs about 30 or so yards apart along the exit ramp – it’s just that ‘Smokey and The Bandit Signs‘ didn’t sound as good to me). The exit was for a major road into an area I was targeting. If you exited the highway and turned right on this road, you entered an area that is full of bread and butter houses that can be bought cheap and sold easily.

The problem was that if you turned left, you would enter one of the worst parts of town – pretty much a war zone. Not sure if that had even occurred to me at the time I put the signs out. Probably not being that I actually put the signs out myself back then and I would only do it on Sunday mornings before 6:00 am.

Just thinking about having to have done that makes me feel tired. (though it was usually well worth it :))

— The Dare —

Ok, so maybe a ‘dare’ is a bit of a stretch. But, the more I think about it, it really was a dare to do the deal as I was relatively new to flipping houses.

The call came in at 2:00 (believe it or not, I do remember the time details) the same afternoon that I put out the signs. The seller had a house he had inherited and needed to sell.

Can’t remember the exact details as to why he ‘had’ to sell it. I think it was a rental he had inherited and he was done with dealing with tenants. This happens a lot with unintentional landlords.

The problem was that the house was on the left side of the highway, the bad one. Darn.

That took some wind out of my sails.

After some conversational probing, it turns out he was willing to sell for something like $10,500. That put a little wind back in the old sail. 🙂

Even in a war zone, I felt like I could do something with the property if it wasn’t completely dilapidated. So, I schedule to meet with him within a couple hours.

Note: When someone is asking a crazy low price, you’d better try to meet them as soon as possible to see if you can do the deal and sign it up quickly. They usually aren’t go to wait long to have their problem taken care of. In the beginning, it’s tempting to stop and just wet yourself, but this isn’t the time to do it. (should I delete that? nah)

— The Pickup —

Here’s where I went to pick up the ‘load’. It was surely a load of something. 🙂

I arrived at the house about 2 hours before dark. The sun was getting low and was starting to descent below the government housing complex that was only separated by one house from the one I was to look at. There were people walking around, seemingly aimlessly, everywhere. Cars were probably turning corners, losing hubcaps. Seems like something that would happen on a regular basis around there.

For some reason, I received a lot of glares…

The yard, or mud pit really as it had rained the night before, was devoid of vegetation but did have a parts from a piano strewn about. Of course, those parts were the heaviest parts. Have you ever tried to pick up a piano? The majority of the weight is the metal part inside holding the wires (sorry, don’t know the technical terms).

The house wasn’t too much better than the yard. It needed paint for sure, but was generally in decent condition. There wasn’t much rotted wood on the outside.

The inside was is rough shape. The floors were buckling because of the leaking roof. The paint on the walls was peeling and some of the sheetrock crumbling due to the moisture inside. The kitchen and bath needed to be gutted. The house was a small 2 bedroom.

I think I figured a landlord could rehab the place for 10-15k.

As for the rent, honestly I was just pulling a number out of thin air. I figured it could rent for at least $500/month, being a single family home with a decent-sized yard.

There wasn’t much for me to figure out as I felt that I could probably wholesale it quickly if I got it at his asking price. I wanted to see how low I get it though.

Negotiations seemed to last for about an hour as we stood around the front yard as it was getting dark, people still wondering around everywhere down the street. I was glad the seller was there with me as he was a very large man that seemed to command respect from the neighbors.

After some back and forth, we agreed on a purchase price of $8,500.

I was now under the gun. I didn’t want to end up buying this place and didn’t want to have to back out of a deal. Action had to be taken immediately to find a buyer.

— The Trip —

My memory is not real clear on how I marketed the property, but I’m sure it involved putting some signs out around the area asking something like $15,000 for a 2 bed / 1 bath fixer. Cash Only! I probably didn’t put the address because I didn’t want to seller to know and I was wanting to build my list of cash buyers.

Other things probably included calling other investors that advertised in the paper and people from my very small existing buyers list.

Several people were interested in the house before they saw it. This is normal.

I was able to put a lockbox on the house and allowed people to just go by and take a look without me having to go out there to meet them. Several people had told me the door was just left wide open so I decided to stop allowing them to go by without me.

I was getting nervous though. No one wanted this thing or would even make an offer.

— The Delivery —

Near the closing date I got a call one evening from a landlord named Mr. Smith. That’s what he was called. He wanted to see it right then, but I wasn’t about to go over there after dark. I told him I would meet him in the morning.

We had to meet right after day break as I still worked a full-time job across town from the house. As we entered the house, we noticed a bed made from a sleeping bag and newspapers. There were plenty of beer cans strewn about. He must have exited out the back when he heard us out front.

Immediately, I was thinking, “GREAT! The guy I need to buy it is now seeing that there is a squatter. Crap.”

He didn’t seem to mind though and continued to walk the house.

We negotiated a little and agreed on something like $12,500 and he could close in time. I was thrilled.

He did end up closing it and we received a check for about $4,000. Not bad.

Melissa and I bought our first flat panel tv with that money as a reward. It was awesome ordering that tv and thinking that the filthy house in the war zone allowed us to get it. What an awesome trade.

— Conclusion —

This adventure was all courtesy of that one bandit sign (not sure which of the three or four he took the number from). It’s incredible to know that you can put signs out in the morning, get a call early in the afternoon, see and contract the house that evening. The only thing that would have been better was if we could have sold it and closed that very night.

Maybe that will happen someday. 🙂

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Thanks.

Danny