Back in my Florida days, there was a real estate broker that used to write up and fax an offer the day after the property was lsited. He always offered the tax assessment.

I guess he must have gotten a few properties that way, but it seemed like he spent a lot of time and paper wirting offers.

I used to refer to him as Ali Kazaam because his offered appeared out of nowhere.

I wish I had a few like him now. Our REOs are selling at 40% - 60% of Tax Assessed value. Several years ago you could do a quick thumbnail that a property was worth 133% of tax assessed value.

Our 2009 TA value is based on 2008 sales data and excludes REO or Short sales (they consider them distressed sales) which is why we are selling at the reduced numbers.

We had a unique one yesterday. The buyer did not flake out the seller did.

We got the listing from a company directly to market a property as a short sale. It was a real piece of cr@p that smelled so bad from animals that we recommended that agents open the doors and let it air out for at least 15 minutes before going in.

The company that arranged the short sale was paying the seller $1000 to co-operate. We finally find a buyer and title finds a $1000 lien from a credit card company. Seller agrees to no compensation so that the mortgage company will pay the lien.

It goes to closing at buyers attorneys office yesterday. Seller starts signing everything until he hits the affidavit that states that there are no other liens on the property. Turns out there was a $40,000 lien placed about 2 1/2 weeks ago. Property was selling for $15,000.

With the amount of staff time that was put into it we were hoping that we would break even when it closed. Now it is looking like we will just end up eating it.