I Think I'm Qualified to Deal With the Unpredictable

So last week I got an e-mail from someone named Shannon. Turns out Shannon is a dude, by the way. Anyway, Shannon wrote me, said he got my e-mail address from some former employee (but didn't say who) and that he heard I wanted to sell my properties. Anyway, he was checking in to tell me he would love to take a few houses off my hands.

I immediately replied, cc'ing Kirby, and saying, "Talk to the guy who represents me." Kirby in turn told me later what their game plan just happens to be. I am quite familiar with what they do, because I have talked to several people over the years who have actually been to the seminars put on by "successful investors" who are told to do the exact same thing. The very first part of the seminar happens to be that the attendee has to make 100 hand-written signs and place them all over town with phrases like, "I buy homes for cash. Any condition." I feel like I have talked several folks out of going down this path of investing, but apparently, I didn't happen to reach Shannon.

Anyway, what Shannon is planning to do is lease my home from me, find a tenant and just pay my mortgage. He would get any residual money from the transaction. Why would I do this when I can just rent out my own homes? I am not sure.

His other suggestion was for me to carry the mortgage on these properties, transfer title to his name, and once again he would just pay my expenses and take what is left for himself. If the house burned down, if the tenant ran a meth lab or any numerous scenarios I may have written about in the past eight years happened, it would be my ass on the line, not Shannon's. I am very familiar with this last scenario, because I did an unsuccessful micro-version of this and ended up will all my homes back at the end of the day. However, this was before the Dodd-Frank Act which makes such a thing on a grand scale illegal.

When Kirby told me Shannon's grand plan, we both had a great chuckle. Nope. I wasn't interested. But Shannon wasn't to be deterred. He had Michael, his "aquisistionist" (Kirby said, "is  aquisistionist even a word??") send me an e-mail--completely bypassing Kirby-- saying "When are we doing this? Sign here."

I responded kindly saying I was only interested in a straight sale, one where title was transferred and I would no longer be involved for any reason. I wasn't interested in lease purchases. I wasn't interested in carrying a mortgage. But if they wanted to make an offer on a property, I would consider it. Otherwise, please have a nice day.

One would think that would be enough, but instead Shannon sent me a condescending e-mail full of grammatical errors and misspellings. Mind you, he didn't send it to Kirby, MY AGENT. Just to me. Shannon said that I "obviously didn't understand their business model," because otherwise I would be absolutely excited to jump at his generous offer. Keep in mind, both of his offers were for me to just give him the houses and keep the liability.

Shannon also said he is the only person in Birmingham who can structure this deal and it would be--I'm not making this up--a win-win for both of us. He also went on to tell me of all the ugly things that would happen to me if I didn't give him my homes, including (but not limited to): me having to take care of these homes, deal with tenants, pay taxes, pay homeowner's insurance and--again, I am not making this up--I would be forced to "deal with the unpredictable."

Oh no. Not that.

Marty Sunshine read the e-mail over my shoulder and said, "He thinks he is negotiating."

I replied, "He thinks I am two degrees shy of stupid."

I forwarded the e-mail to Kirby. We both had a great laugh at Shannon's expense. When Kirby replied he said, "Oh boy. I didn’t know that he was the only one that can structure those kind of deals. I need to hook up with him so that I can learn how to do them." 

Yea. Me too.