# Letter asking to buy your house (that's not listed) - what the heck?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [May 14, 2009, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396 "2009-05-14T10:37:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Caught\_Work](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caught_Work)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2009, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/21 "2009-05-14T22:33:16Z")
You call them, they come over to check out the house (make sure it’s OK on the inside, no holes in the walls, state of carpet, paint, etc), scope out all of your stuff, check the backyard for access and how secure the backdoor is, wait for you to go to work one day and BAM! all your stuff is gone.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2009, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/22 "2009-05-14T22:40:54Z")
> [@Labrador\_Deceiver](#):
>
> I’m floored that people’s first reaction would be “scam or real estate agent”. I know several people who found their home this way. It is quite common here in Atlanta.
Legitimate real estate agents send letters like that all the time here. First, they could get the listing, second, they could probably get a better price with a buyer available and not lots of competition. I got a lot more when the market was hot than recently, though.
I’m surprised it works. Moving is a lot of work, and I certainly wouldn’t want to due to some random letter.
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### Author:  [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2009, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/23 "2009-05-15T00:13:04Z")
One of the tennets of those late night, get rich infomercials for real estate, could be in part due to your #2 reason in the OP. People (“investors”) typically send out cold calls/letters for undesireable houses, or houses behind in payments. Sometimes these things are public record (behind payments) in the newspaper, and aspiring Donald Trumps will send out the letters.
Have you defaulted on a payment recently? Are you in foreclosure?
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### Author:  [@bytheway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bytheway)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2009, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/24 "2009-05-15T01:19:35Z")
> [@ParentalAdvisory](#):
>
> One of the tennets of those late night, get rich infomercials for real estate, could be in part due to your #2 reason in the OP. People (“investors”) typically send out cold calls/letters for undesireable houses, or houses behind in payments. Sometimes these things are public record (behind payments) in the newspaper, and aspiring Donald Trumps will send out the letters.
>
> Have you defaulted on a payment recently? Are you in foreclosure?
Mortgage payments are on auto-pay, & latest quarterly statement from lender did not show a problem, so everything related to the mortgage should be OK. We’re not in foreclosure either.
The reason our house has little curb appeal is because you cannot see most of the house from the street, just a large tree and the car port. Our house is far from the shabbiest on the street (maybe slightly less than average).
There is in fact a tear-down on the market several houses down the block.
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### Author:  [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2009, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/25 "2009-05-15T01:25:13Z")
Gotcha…
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### Author:  [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2009, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/26 "2009-05-15T11:11:56Z")
My Mum sold her house like this. One day a real estate agent knocks on the door,
“I have a buyer for your house.”
“I’m not interested in selling it.”
“He will give a good price.”
“I don’t care, goodbye.”
A week later a signed contract for the house was in the post. All that was required was for Mum to sign on the dotted line. The price was ten times what she’d bought the house for ten years earlier. She added another 20% on top of their offer and signed. They accepted the counter offer and the deal was done. She really didn’t want to move, which put her in a good bargaining position, ultimately it was a very good deal for her.
It turned out it the purchaser was a developer who was in the process of buying out the entire block. I gather that he didn’t get all the houses he wanted and so his development never went ahead. My Mum’s old house is still standing, fifteen years later.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2009, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/27 "2009-05-15T11:35:50Z")
> [@delphica](#):
>
> I got one a while back, it was handwritten on a kitten notecard, so I am assuming it is not a real estate agent (but maybe).
Check that handwritten note-was it really handwritten, or just printed to look that way? Did it describe the house in any way, or could it apply to any house in the neighborhood?
There are businesses out there that will leave these “personalized” notes at every home in the neighborhood, looking to find those who don’t know what their home is worth and are hard up for cash. It’s the real estate equivalence of spam.
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### Author:  [@HongKongFooey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HongKongFooey)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2009, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/28 "2009-05-15T11:38:37Z")
I live near a school and a playground in a neighbourhood where a lot of houses are going up. We get letters like this all the time both from interested homebuyers and from real estate agents. The agents usually include their business card or write the letter on stationery that includes their information. Actually, with agents they usually just come to the door and ask directly. As more homes get built we’ve received fewer of these but it’s been fairly common in the past few years around here. It did throw me a bit the first time it happened though.
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### Author:  [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2009, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/29 "2009-05-15T12:44:12Z")
I live in a desirable street (if I do say so myself!). We get a letter every couple of weeks like this.
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### Author:  [@Labrador\_Deceiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labrador_Deceiver)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2009, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/30 "2009-05-15T13:20:33Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> I’m surprised it works. Moving is a lot of work, and I certainly wouldn’t want to due to some random letter.
What does that mean? People move because they sold their house, not because they received a letter in the mail.
By the way, legitimate real estate agents do not send out letters that way “We are interested in buying your house.” They send out letters that say “Are you interested in selling your house?”
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### Author:  [@Covered\_In\_Bees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covered_In_Bees)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2009, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/31 "2009-05-15T22:25:28Z")
The people offering to buy your house probably have tracked buried treasure of some sort to your property and figured they’d still come out ahead if they had to buy your house to get to the treasure.
Better start digging up your yards and maybe checking inbetween the walls for any kind of goodies.
Do report back and lemme know what you find. Maybe I can take it off your hands if it’s just an old looking piece of junk statue or something. 😉
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### Author:  [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2009, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/32 "2009-05-16T00:44:32Z")
> [@Princhester](#):
>
> I live in a desirable street (if I do say so myself!). We get a letter every couple of weeks like this.
Ditto. I got one yesterday and my average would also be about one a fortnight. Most are from real estate agents. Several have been from private, would-be buyers. There’s nothing sinister about them.
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### Author:  [@Snnipe\_70E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snnipe_70E)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2009, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-asking-to-buy-your-house-thats-not-listed-what-the-heck/496396/33 "2009-05-16T05:31:34Z")
I owned some un developed land at one time. Several times I got a letter from a guy in So Cal saying repersented a client who wanted to purchase land in the are and if interested please return the inclosed card. I thought what the heck and sent the card. He made me an offer of $25000. the county apprased the property at $29,000 under prop 13. A year later I sold the land for $350,000. Until I sold the land I always returned his cards with “You have got to be kidding.”
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