They bought a house nobody could see inside. It came with $300,000 in equity.
They wanted one home for three generations: the kids, the parents, room for the grandparents. Houses that size rarely come up. The one that did came with a warning label.
One family, two moves: the buy in Morton Grove, then the sale in Niles.
01 7033 Palma · Morton Grove
“Drive by only.”
***UNSAFE TO ENTER*** DO NOT DISTURB OCCUPANTS*** CASH ONLY*** NO INTERIOR INSPECTION*** DRIVE BY ONLY***
Most buyers read that and kept scrolling. Bank-owned, still occupied, sold as-is. No inspection, no walkthrough, not even a look through the front door. You had to price in the worst case you couldn’t see: a fire, flooding and mold, a structural problem the village could flag the week after closing. This family had a reason not to scroll past.
I ran the comps. Even with all of that priced in, the house was worth well over $1.1M, and the bank was asking $715K. We bid $800K: cash, no contingencies, the cleanest offer the bank could get.
We lost.
Another buyer won the round. Then their deal fell apart. We bid again.
The bank said yes.
When the doors finally opened, the worst case turned out to be a sump pump and some water-damaged floorboards.
- Paid$800K
- Worth$1.1M+
- Equity on day one$300K+
Worth: my comps at the time. Today’s public valuation estimates put it near $1.2M.
02 8313 W Ballard · Niles
Then the old house stalled.
Before they called me about the sale, another agent had their old house on the market twice. A price cut, 104 days, no sale. It’s on a busy stretch of Ballard, and months earlier I’d sold a bigger, different-tier house down the street for $745K. Buyers compared the two, and the price didn’t add up. The photos showed oversized furniture crowding every room.
I priced it where the market was, $575K. We cleared out the big furniture, decluttered, staged it virtually and reshot every photo. Multiple offers came in within days.
“He was the perfect agent for both parts of the process… These changes and his advice was 100% the difference between the property selling quickly vs the property sitting for a while.”