Shoot first and ask questions later

There are a lot of buyers chasing deals right now. It feels like everyone woke up after New Year’s, realized they’ve been earning 0.1% in their money market accounts, and decided to buy apartment buildings.

Many of them are doing really stupid deals, ones where I can guarantee they will earn basically no return for years. And all of that dumb money is pushing up the prices of what should be reasonably good deals.

So, any deal that makes sense (where there’s decent cashflow) is getting a lot of offers. Earlier this week, we saw a fixer in Echo Park elicit 10+ non-contingent offers, even though the broker hadn’t released any of the disclosures to the buyers at that stage.

As a buyer in this kind of environment, you need to adjust. Your job is to quickly review each possible deal and then, for the ones that make sense, move as quickly as you can to make a credible offer.

Later, during the contingency period, you can do the hemming and hawing we all like to do when thinking about a major purchase.

Right now… shoot first.