My First REI "Paycheck" and Some Other Surprises

Surprise #1: My First REI Paycheck
I received a call from my wife while at work today. She said she checked our mail, and in it was an envelope addressed to me from the RE investor I whom I gave the FSBO information to a while back. I recall when I sent him the information, I specifically said I did not want his $5 referral fee unless the deal closed (and then I would get a minimum of $250). Needless to say, I thought either he was sending me a personal note or he closed the deal and was sending me my proceeds from the deal. I asked my wife to open it up, which she did immediately. She said it was a check for $5. While I am overjoyed that I have finally gotten something for my venture these last 4+ months, I never expected the investor to send me the $5 referral fee (especially, after I told him not to). I figure he did this both as an honest gesture on his part and perhaps to make me keep feeding him deals.

Suprise #2: My Wife
While I still had my wife on the phone, she explained that she went to visit some old neighborhoods around town. She is originally from this area and used to frequent a lot of the neighborhoods in the vicinity as a child/young adult. My curiosity piqeud, and I asked her why she was looking around old neighborhoods. She said she was looking at houses for our venture. A little shocked, I immediately said "Our venture?" With which she replied "Yes." I didn't ask anything more because I was at work, but I plan to really give her a big hug and a long talk this evening as I feel like a yo-yo with her objectives (and nonobjectives) in this REI venture. I would like to think the "paycheck" I received from the investor was motivation for her to look on her own, but she checked the mail after coming back from looking at those old neighborhoods. Slowly, I feel the weight on my shoulders beginning to lift.

Surprise #3: Another Possible FSBO Deal
While scanning through some online FSBO sites at lunch, I came across another possible deal. The owner is asking $115k for a house built in 1979. It's a 3/2 with about 1660sf. Judging by the description, the owner has put a lot of upgrades into the house. I looked up the online county clerk's records and found the owner bought the house in 1990 for - get this - $44,000. It was a VA loan carrying a 9.5% interest rate. I immediately went to BankRate.com to check what the existing balance would be. Running calculations, I figured the balance is about $35k. I haven't ran comps yet, but I think $115k is about right for that kind of house in that area of town. What makes me want to persue this deal is that the owner put the following statement in the online classified:

Willing to Negotiate

I will try to get more information when I call the owner tonight, and see how far down I can get her. With $80k of equity in the property, my adrenalene is really flowing. I don't think she'll go down a whole lot, but having a lot of equity and a small outstanding mortgage certainly opens up a lot of possibilities.