As many of my past posts have illustrated, while the local governments have been getting their NSP sea legs, we have received many hurry-up-and-wait directives. "We need you to have a gajillion houses under contract in two weeks!" shrieks the local government. I dust off the pipeline that has been sitting idle while I await directions, leap into the field and put in half a gajillion offers. I gather up all the various paperwork required to submit homes to the county for approval and continue to mine sources, negotiate counteroffers and wait for county approval. And wait. And wait. And we lose deals while we wait. It would be different if the county would respond that they've reviewed our offering and don't like the houses, but they don't respond at all. At all!! I'm supposed to cheerfully shrug off all the wasted time and effort. I know I shouldn't care since I can't move forward without the county's approval, but I know I will ultimately be judged based on my production regardless of the forces beyond my control.
Anyway, so a few days ago, my ultimate boss, the head honcho comes into my office with his face all alight and tells me gleefully that the county is ready to move forward in aggressively acquiring houses.
"Okay," I smiled beatifically at him and turned back to my computer screen.
"No, really. They are committed now."
I turned back to face him.
"And that means that we'll need to have 10 closings a month for the next 6 months."
If he hadn't been serious I would have burst into peals of laughter. Ten closings a month is a dream. Why? Well, we do desktop reviews of about 25 houses for every 5 we go to see. We see approximately 5 houses for every 3 offers. We have to put out about 3 offers for every 1 we get accepted. By the way, we also have mountains of meetings and 5 other jurisdictions where we are starting rehab and resale processes for houses that have already been purchased. Ten closings a month? Okay. We'll get right on it.
I contacted our realtor, who is awesome and extremely hard-working, and told him the news. He laughed too, but promptly sent me over 50 listings to review. I picked out 21. Twelve were available. We visited them and decided to put out 7 offers. None have been accepted or countered yet. It's a slog, but we are pushing.
The next day, the head honcho revised his goals for the county. Instead of promising 10 closings a month, he committed that we would have 60 houses under contract by the end of March. You know it's mid-January, right? Seventy-odd days to put 60 houses under contract? It's beyond laughable; it's absurd. Everyone I work with who is a practitioner knows it's absurd but no one will tell him. I'm not going to tell him either since I, apparently, am negative enough (see the next post). Still, we are going to mine every source we can thing of, put out a flurry of offers and deluge the county with requests for approvals. It's going to be an extremely chaotic, bumpy ride. I hope we're all strapped in.
Anyway, so a few days ago, my ultimate boss, the head honcho comes into my office with his face all alight and tells me gleefully that the county is ready to move forward in aggressively acquiring houses.
"Okay," I smiled beatifically at him and turned back to my computer screen.
"No, really. They are committed now."
I turned back to face him.
"And that means that we'll need to have 10 closings a month for the next 6 months."
If he hadn't been serious I would have burst into peals of laughter. Ten closings a month is a dream. Why? Well, we do desktop reviews of about 25 houses for every 5 we go to see. We see approximately 5 houses for every 3 offers. We have to put out about 3 offers for every 1 we get accepted. By the way, we also have mountains of meetings and 5 other jurisdictions where we are starting rehab and resale processes for houses that have already been purchased. Ten closings a month? Okay. We'll get right on it.
I contacted our realtor, who is awesome and extremely hard-working, and told him the news. He laughed too, but promptly sent me over 50 listings to review. I picked out 21. Twelve were available. We visited them and decided to put out 7 offers. None have been accepted or countered yet. It's a slog, but we are pushing.
The next day, the head honcho revised his goals for the county. Instead of promising 10 closings a month, he committed that we would have 60 houses under contract by the end of March. You know it's mid-January, right? Seventy-odd days to put 60 houses under contract? It's beyond laughable; it's absurd. Everyone I work with who is a practitioner knows it's absurd but no one will tell him. I'm not going to tell him either since I, apparently, am negative enough (see the next post). Still, we are going to mine every source we can thing of, put out a flurry of offers and deluge the county with requests for approvals. It's going to be an extremely chaotic, bumpy ride. I hope we're all strapped in.
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