# Real Estate_CoronaGary, Director of Great lakes REIA (Cleveland Large Investors Club) I met…
I met Gary, manager of the Great Lakes REIA (Big Investors Club in Cleveland) one of the times I went there. We had good communication and kept in touch, and in fact we started a weekly routine.
You know - updates in the market situation, searching for options for mutual help, etc.….
As part of his club, Gary does a lot of information selling projects today, but in his past he was an active and successful broker and because of his network of connections from the club he receives referrals for transactions to date.
And when he comes to a deal that needs to be closed in cash, he usually turns to me because he knows about my work with Israeli investors (and also doesn't really have time to deal with it).
In one of our conversations in September of 2019, Gary contacted me and told about one of his employees (I will not mention his name, you will soon understand why). You could say that he "had fun" a bit with the wholesale business and bought some apartments he wanted to sell.
The same guy holds a day job at all and to put it mildly - he was not particularly successful in the sale of the properties and got stuck with several apartments that even then he was under pressure to get rid of.
Of course I said to myself "why not" and picked up the phone.
The guy was very nice, and the property he was most urgent to sell was on 232 East Street, in the area of Euclid, an apartment that needed a renovation of about 22K.
At first glance, it felt like it could be a great deal, but when I did the right math and realized I would need the apartment to invest in 62K and the price was higher than that, I realized it wasn't going to happen and I had to politely refuse.
It sucks because there was a seller here with good motivation to sell an excellent property that was exactly in my investment criterion and the deal dissolved but I did not completely forget about it…
Although we didn't make a deal together, we still kept in touch, when I gave him tips on how to transition from a day job to working in the field, and we thought of all kinds of possibilities for how to work together and help each other,
So I may not have found a deal, but found a new friend in Cleveland
Then the Corona arrived …… ..
About two weeks ago, I received an email with a request for a phone call from the seller. When I came up to talk with him he tells me that he went with his wife to Brahms and when he came back not only did he go into solitary confinement, it turns out he was also diagnosed with the virus.
Aside from the shock I experienced and the sadness to hear it from him, he also shared with me that now his financial situation is humane because he has effectively stopped working and his payments are heavy on him and he approached me with one request "please get me out of the property".
This time he pointed out to me that he understands that a buyer of property now expects significant assumptions because of a crisis and a lot of uncertainty. We quickly reached agreement on the price and closing conditions. And I actually got this deal for my investor at 52.5K when the pre-crisis property value also reached 90K
So sense 1: Whether you are American or Israeli, and know for sure that you need to sell, you should try to reach understandings as soon as they hit the iron while it's hot. Because when we have a problem, time can only make it worse, not to mention if it is a black swan in the form of an international epidemic.
Morality 2: Even if we do not live in the US and physically operate there on a regular basis, there is no substitute for maintaining and cultivating quality human relationships. Do not look for deals, make connections!
And my investor? It was the second property I bought for him, and I found at least one good reason to enjoy the current situation….
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