Page 269 - Trump University Commercial Real Estate 101

The Right W a y to Sell for Maximum Profit

I was putting together a four - property, mixed - use commercial deal
in Louisiana. I got the property package and financials, and formu-

lated my strike price. Shortly before the negotiations, I Googled the
seller ’ s name.
I discovered the seller was not a U.S. citizen, and that the proper-
ties were in foreclosure. Do you suppose my strike price came down
just a little bit, due to the fact that I knew the seller had urgent reasons
for selling?
I kept reading and discovered that the seller had three other prop-
erties that had been foreclosed on in the past couple of years. I even
found a federal court judgment on the Web that stated that if he did
not dispose of all his U.S. real estate assets within the next 18 months,
the seller was going to jail. Well then.
I later found out what the seller ’ s scam was: He would come into
the United States, buy a property, put as little money down on it as
possible, and then stop paying everything. I mean everything. He ’ d
collect the rents until someone would buy the property from him.
Some tenants would leave, but others stuck around. Before the bank
could actually foreclose some months later, he would declare bankruptcy,
after having sent big bags of money to some offshore bank account.
Some business model. All it took was for me to check him out on
Google and I had all the information I needed.
For a few dollars you can even go to a service such as www.elance.
com and hire professional researchers to do a comprehensive web
search on anyone or anything. It ’ s cheap insurance.
It goes without saying that when you are on either side of the
transaction, you should use the Internet to get all the information you

can on the other party.

Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up

You ’ re now very close to selling your deal. Don ’ t blow it by failing to
follow up. If you ’ ve done your due diligence on the buyer and he checks
out, you ’ ll be moving forward with the purchase and sale agreement.

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