How are your buyers doing?
I was just online with a new buyer. We have about 1 weeks worth of inventory and personally I had a listing on for 3 days that got 50 showings and 13 offers, about half of them over asking.
How are your buyers doing?
If they can find a house that fits their needs and they are prequalified with a letter in hand, it’s still a crapshoot to get the deal. Contingencies are death to deals where cash exists and there are several cash buyers out there, but most I’ve seen are ‘investors’ trying to lowball their way into a deal. Of those 13 offers, most of the cash ones were 10-15% under our list price. They thought cash would speak loudly enough to get the deal.
Cash is king but what if you’re not able to put up that much cash, even though you’re willing to pay the market price to get the deal?
There are several programs online today to help but there are some big differences in those programs. Keller Williams has partnered with Homeward as the one of choice for lots of reasons. It’s available to agents from other companies but I thought I’d share our experience with them on my last deal.
I have a buyer we tried to go the conventional route. They were in a situation of owning a home they needed to sell but due to high demand, did not want to list until we had a deal and no one wanted to sign a deal until we had a contract at best, or we just lost because cash was taking away our options.
In came Homeward. They pre-approved my buyers to get a loan from Homeward (they are a mortgage originator), we found the house and offered cash at the list price. Previously we had offered at least $10K over asking and still lost because of contingencies. They had us do an inspection, get an appraisal, and approved the deal, and closed in a couple of weeks, instead of 6-8 weeks. The sellers accepted the deal because it was cash with no contingencies.
My clients moved into the new house, cleaned up the old house, and listed it. In a few days, we had a contract and it just closed yesterday. We are scheduled to purchase the new house back from Homeward using them as the lender next week. Doing this makes the total out of pocket for this about 2% of the new purchase price including the rent owned at closing for the time between the two closings. That’s a lot less than $10,000 they were willing to overpay and it preserved their peace of mind. Homelessness was not an option for them and the kids.
Real estate is changing and we need to change with it. Keller Williams is finishing up Family Reunion this week and I’ll have more to share later but this was one personal success story I had with clients I’ve had for many years.
If you want to know more about the things KW offers and how we can put you in the position to help your clients, connect with me on my calendar. Schedule a time and we’ll talk via Google Meet. I’d love to chat.
Thanks for listening,
Jerry Robertson