Our 100th Closing in Louisiana (and it was a doozy)

We are proud to have closed out 100th property in Louisiana! This is a big milestone for Home Buyer Louisiana and represents 100 people we have helped. The 100th deal was also a very complicated deal that we did with our good friend Courtney Fricke. Watch the video to hear the story behind this 100th house we bought or read the video transcript below.

Video Transcript

Hey, you guys. Aussie Steve here from Home Buyer Louisiana. We Buy Houses in any condition in Louisiana. I’m joined today with Courtney Fricke from Deep Root Property Solutions. Actually, it’s a pretty exciting day for me personally. We just had a closing, and this was Home Buyer Louisiana’s 100th property that we’ve closed on! So, really excited about that milestone. That’s 100 solutions that we’ve sold for people that have problem properties. I mean, that’s a big deal, so we’re really proud of that.

I’m really proud of this deal, actually. It was quite a complicated deal. So, the sellers are out of state, so they weren’t able to be there for the closing. They closed remotely and sent the paperwork in. We actually worked with them to do that. But it was a complicated deal. The seller reached out to us. It was an inherited house, in his mom’s estate. There was a loan on it that was severely overdue. He didn’t know the loan existed for quite a while, so he was behind a lot. He tried to sell it to a few people that got under contract, and they were unable to close, just the amount that was owed on it and the liens was just too much to justify anyone purchasing it.

Yeah, which is one of the reasons he reached out to us. So, we had a really good conversation, and Arione from our office really got to understand what the story was, what the situation, what the facts were, and we pretty soon figured out that, also for us, we couldn’t buy it all cash either. But that didn’t stop us. We had to team up with our good friend Courtney.

Courtney is a creative real estate investor, and we’ve done a bunch of deals with her, and she’s really smart at doing deals where the people think there’s no deals. So, we actually introduced her to the mix so she could speak with the seller and try to make a deal happen. I will allow Courtney talk about what happened.

Courtney:

A lot of times, when cash doesn’t work, there are situations where people think I’m overpaying, but it’s really just because I have more tools in my tool belt. And so, it allows me to pay more than what most other investors can because this one, when he found out that mom had gotten that loan late in her life and he found out late down the road. So, it was actively in foreclosure at this point because it hadn’t been paid for a significant amount of time at this point.

But then also, when he had tried to sell it with some investors before, they found out that it had these liens and judgments. I’m talking like, like payday loans for like cars that were like 20 plus percent interest that were just racking up doubling basically the amount of the lien, some attorney fee creditors and some other ones. Actually the heir had some liens that once he took possession of his mom’s property now tied to this house.

All of those things had made it, you know, really a dead deal for a lot of investors. But most investors, especially if they’re new in this or if they’re a one-trick pony, they don’t have a lot of tools in their tool belt. You know, they just say, “Hey, this is what I can do. Here’s my cash offer.” But the reality is, I’ve been doing this for nearly a decade now and I’ve actually, from even my very first deal, done nothing but these complex deals.

So, I just looked at what was going on. First of all, he had this mortgage that was in place. Yes, it was in foreclosure, but it actually qualified for our takeover payment program. So, we said, “Hey, look, it’s going to be a little bit more complicated, but we think we can make this work.”

The second one is all those liens and judgments against the house. What we did is we looked at those and I utilized some of my tools to be able to go in and track down those creditors, track down a decision maker, and negotiate with them, which is not always easy to do because it usually gets sent to attorneys and things like that. But ultimately, we were able to do that and so that we then had some cushion in this deal that made sense, and so we were going to move forward. I mean, this seller, at that point, was just saying, “Courtney, I just want to be done. I want to put this behind me.”

Understandably, it’s really difficult for him. In the past, he had had the hope that other people were going to buy it from him and thought he was done, but then they couldn’t perform. And we take pride in being able to perform.

A lot of people think we’re in the house business, and I agree, to some extent, and a lot of people say, we’re in the people business, but I really believe we’re in the business of making promises and keeping them as well. And I’m really glad we were able to do that for this seller, and so we were able to perform, and there was a point where we thought it might not work for us, and we don’t like when that happens, and it’s rare when it happens because of all the tools we have, but it was a difficult one, but we were able to get it done.

Steve:

I think the key was that Courtney was able to negotiate some of those liens down with the lien holders, and I think that really made the deal viable. Because it was looking insurmountable, but that really opened it up, and with the Takeover payment arrangement and stuff, it worked, so we’re really happy for this, it’s a real win-win situation.

The seller was very pleased to have an offer to get those liens paid off, and he was really happy. We’re happy, myself and Courtney actually brought it together, and we have a joint LLC. We own some properties together, so this is a property we’re going to fix up and make available for a new owner in the future.

There’s a little cherry on top. Courtney has a lot of people in her life that like the investing she does and they like to get involved but hands-off-wise. So, she actually had another investor who actually provided the loan to provide the capital to fix up the property, reinstate it and also to pay off those liens and judgments and all the bills that racked up against this house. Now, they own interest. So, that’s another person that is really happy to be in the deal and be on the interest on it. That means that we get to use our own capital. It frees us up to buy more deals. We like to be out there and help more people, and we want everyone to win.

Thanks, Courtney. I appreciate it. I always love working with you. It’s really great to make these deals happen. I’m also happy that we’ve completed 100 deals. Thank you.

If you’re looking to sell your property, reach out to us. If there are problems, such as the condition of the property, or liens and judgments, and others have said they can’t buy your property, reach out to us. Maybe we can make it work.

Thanks, guys, have a good one.