On Feb 10th, my PM told me that one of my Tenant in Covington, GA gave his notice. The house is a 3/2 and was rented for 12 months only. He had to move because of his employer, the US military.

I reviewed the house numbers, it could rent for $1200, but it was worth 190k according to Zillow and MLS comps. According to Zillow, the house prices had moved rapidly from 130k in 2016 to 215k in April 2019 and was suddenly repriced at 200k and trended down to 190k in the last year. Zillow did not expect any more appreciation for the area.

The tenant vacated in March, I had done extensive rehab the year prior to change the carpet with luxury vinyl plank, so there was less work this time. Still we repainted the whole house and did some landscaping, the house hit the MLS on April 1st at $189,999.

I received an offer for 170k on April 2nd. Atlanta lockdown started on April 3rd but real estate is considered essential. I sent a counter at 185k on April 3rd, and the prospective buyer said that he needed to check with employer and lender if he was still sure to get the mortgage.

On Tue 7th, I received an offer for the full price. The offer is subject to 4 weeks inspection and due diligence period and to financing. We reduced inspection period to standard 10 days.

The deal closed on May 7th.

The real estate broker told me that if anything, the lockdown situation had the potential for substantially lowering prices. There was very few house sales in recent time, and no house available in that area. I trusted MLS based comps done by agents which was consistent with Zillow.

I put the house on sale at Zillow mid and got two firm offers within 6 days. It could be that the house was worth more 200k than 190k, so I might have gotten 10k more if I had priced the house at the Zillow high bound.