Selling Your Twin Cities Duplex? “Guaranteed Offers” Could Cost You $50,000+

We’ve all seen the ads. They scream, “Get a guaranteed offer on your property!”. They promise a quick, stress-free sale without the hassle of getting it ready to put on the market and leaving for a constant stream of showings.

Of course, they make this offer to you with the expectation that you will sell the property to them at a discount.

Sometimes this discount is enormous. Other times, it is less superficially enormous, but still takes money out of your pocket.

How much?

While my answer is neither scientific nor driven by a large volume of data, I can tell you that in the Minneapolis and St. Paul duplex, triplex, and fourplex market, with one company, it is somewhere between $50,000 and $70,000.

I stumbled into this the other day when I realized what the name of the LLC company, a known guaranteed offer company, is buying properties under. I did a quick search and found over a dozen duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes that had been purchased under this plan.

Tax records show the company purchased the property and for how much. Four to six weeks later, that property appeared on the MLS for $50,000-$70,000 more than it was just acquired for.

MLS photos of the listing strongly suggest nothing was done to the duplex after the inhabitants moved out. It wasn’t painted, rehabbed, or in some cases, even vacuumed. The majority of the time, properties sold at that higher list price. In one instance, a duplex sold for just enough to cover the original acquisition cost and selling expenses and closing costs. In one instance, the property failed to sell, and the LLC still owns it today.

In other words, more than 80% of the time the LLC made $50,000 or more simply because the person who wanted to avoid the hassle of showings had moved out. It seems to me if a hassle was indeed that big, and an owner or tenant needed to move anyway, renting a POD and an Airbnb for a month or two would have cost far less than the $50,000 loss of equity.

If you’re thinking about selling and don’t want the hassle, please call me before you give away $50,000 of your hard-earned money. I’m sure we can reduce your stress and help you pocket more at the same time.