Closing your stalled listings

If your listings have been sitting on the market for months unsold, IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT!

Any of the following could be the cause:

• Buyers are finding alternatives with better value elsewhere
• Offers are being rejected due to indecision related to an as-yet undivulged or undisclosed financial, personal, or logistical issue
• Lenders are not approving today's offers based on today's risks and/or today's values

Today, costs across the board are substantially higher:

• Prices
• Rates
• Taxes
• Insurance
• Utilities
• Homeowners Dues
• Food, clothing & Supplies
• Healthcare & medicine
• Transportation & tuition

What about salaries?

Problems an investor solves for you and your seller

• The price is making the sale impossible
• Today's prices and rates are disqualifying or dissuading buyers
• FHA/VA buyers are being refused financing because the current condition does not meet the required standards, and the seller does not want to (or cannot) make the necessary repairs
• The sale leaves the seller facing substantial capital gains that they don't want to pay
• The seller DOES NOT WANT TO BE A LANDLORD but would like the monthly income if they just didn't have the costs or responsibilities
• Your listing is soon to expire and you have no acceptable offers
• The seller's logistical fears or requirements are sabotaging the sale
• Co-owners cant agree
• Seller leasing out because they couldn't sell

An investor appears...could that help me close?

• Initially, many of you are open to talking with us...
  ...until unfamiliar questions are asked along with a request to have a 3 way call with the seller, all of which leaves you concerned about professional obligations, conduct, privacy, confidentiality, and disclosure.
• If the listing is yours...
  ...you already have a legal obligation to the seller "to make diligent and continued efforts" to sell their house, and you want to earn a commission, (and you're not working for free, right?!)
• You may also feel:

• usure as to what to expect
• responsible to interpret or advise about risks and benefits beyond the scope of your license.
• concerned about getting enough listings and closings
• hesitant to work in unfamiliar conditions which even experienced brokers and most attorneys don't really understand.
• suspicious this might just be a scam or illegal
• frustrated that this may be yet another "low-ball-cash quick-close back-out-before-closing" situation
• inclined to mistakenly view our relationship as adversarial when all of the aligned benefits leave it indisputably collaborative

Typical misunderstandings and assumptions:

• You have an obligation to protect sellers from unfamiliar alternatives (untrue)
• "A confused mind says no" (true)
• Noone can know what someone is actually willing to do until asked (true)
• What someone decides today may be very different next month (true)
• Investor = lowball offer (untrue)
• Cash buyer = higher offer (untrue)
• The ONLY way to sell a house is with cash or a bank loan (untrue)
• Loans must be paid off in full at closing (untrue)
• You cannot legally pay someone else's mortgage (untrue)
• Professional investors submit offers regardless of understanding the comprehensive needs of the seller (untrue)
• A homeowner's specific reasons for selling should be irrelevant or is a private, personal issue (untrue)
• Our questions lead you to suspect that we already have an offer in mind but we're "beating around the bush" (untrue)
• An offer addressing each of the seller's concerns faces little resistance (true)
• Finding a place for the seller to live after the sale will have no complications (untrue)
• Capital gains do not impact primary residences (untrue)
• A seller who will buy after the sale needs all of the money from the sale first (untrue)

• Everything we do is legal, ethical, & disclosed:
  Our offers are less conventional but more comprehensive, which is what's required when the traditional approach is not working, your time, money, and effort are not resulting in a sale, and you realize you will lose the opportunity to earn your commission.

  According to the board of Realtors NOTHING we ask is too personal or confidential, nor do our questions breach disclosure obligations. However, our questions are critical to being able to formulate a comprehensive offer that gets your sale closed.

  Exclusive Right To Sell Agreement ERS-20tb:

  • Section 4 - Broker agrees to make diligent and continued efforts to sell the Property.
  • Section 6c - [Broker] obtains information relating to the present mortgage(s) on the Property.
  • Section 11 - Broker will deal honestly and fairly... will disclose all known facts that materially affect the value of the residential property which are not readily observable to the buyer; will present all offers and counteroffers in a timely manner unless directed otherwise in writing; and will have limited confidentiality with Seller unless waived in writing.

  FARBAR AS-IS CFSAPORP:

  • Section B2 - The Seller shall obtain and furnish an estoppel statement from the mortgagee setting forth the principal balance, escrow balance, method of payment, interest rate, assumability and whether the mortgage is in good standing.

   

• No offer will be submitted without the seller's prior agreement:

  You may have received offers from other buyers...they were guessing: "what might the seller go for?". That's what you are accustomed to and also what has left this transaction where it is now!

  That approach DOES NOT work for us since there may be dozens of variations of offers and benefits. It's too much. Instead, we work in reverse through a process of elimination. The goal is to FIRST going to comprehensively understand in complete detail what the seller needs before, during, and after the sale. Only then could anyone be in any position to create the appropriate terms and timing to address each of the seller's concerns so that they agree to the offer and get to closing.

• Our offers are specifically designed to be accepted:

  This is a collaboration, not a poker game. We're not going to guess like the others before us who failed.

  That is why we require a comprehensive understanding of the seller's situation in all its detail, FIRST. In that way, the offer we create will explcitly address each and every issue the seller is facing. That is why it will be accepted - they designed it themselves!

  In order for us to be able to:

  1. borrow the necessary money from private lenders
  2. pay what the seller wants
  3. put together an offer that will be accepted then closed

  . . . a detailed understanding of the seller's situation is requisite.

• In the end:
  If it can't meet the needs of everyone involved we will gratefully thank each other, wish each other the best. It doesn't always work out. When it does, everyone is happy.

Investors can accomplish what other buyers cannot!

The differences between selling to a “typical buyer” and selling to us are simply:

1. HOW the property will be purchased
2. WHAT will be paid to WHO and WHEN
3. HOW the property will be used

  We're not “traditional buyers”

We're not “traditional buyers”

We're NOT paying all cash, or using or depending on banks for approval, and we will also NOT be using the property as a residence.

The ONLY difference between selling to a “typical buyer” and selling to us is HOW the property will be purchased and HOW it will be used.

That shouldn’t matter since your agreement with the seller is to be compensated for getting the property sold, not for pre-determining HOW it will be sold or what terms they might be willing to accept (which changes every day anyway).

  There will be surprises

All sales have extenuating circumstances

As real estate professionals, we know that EVERY sale has extenuating circumstances, both before and after the closing, which we may or may not be aware of.

Our offers are designed to address the additional challenges and considerations, and ours are accepted because the sellers participate in developing the terms.

  The detail is critical

Our approach is a COMPREHENSIVE solution

That is why we require such detailed information about the seller’s encumbrances, intentions, logistics, deadlines, property costs, and potential obstacles.

All of that information is critical to putting together an offer, a solution, that addresses each of the seller’s specific concerns.

Not only can a “straight sale” not provide that, but at this point your listing's current price and condition are not getting you to close anyway.

  This isn't something new

We didn't create these solutions...they have been around for 100 years

Big banks and securitized mortgages ONLY became "the norm" after the 70's. Before that ALL REAL ESTATE TRANSACTIONS WERE FINANCED LOCALLY, and neighbors financed neighbors which also caused communities to grow. Even though "the norm" is different today, those time-tested, earlier approaches are STILL used in commercial transactions and by investors.

Today, those same large banks with strict rules and no flexibility want you to fear alternatives to their now "familiar" offerings, and want you to believe that anything other than their "safe", "reliable" loans are risky and not to be trusted: Ehem....who got bailed out in the 2000's and now offers unaffordable rates, and who had to give up their homes?

The truth is ANYONE CAN buy and sell property WITHOUT banks, fees, extra points, brokers, agents, commissions, or strict and rigid rules that make it difficult for us homeowners to sell to a new buyer. FYI, the banks STILL have thousands of homes on their books since 2008 which they are NOT selling, so they in fact control the supply by holding them back, AND the demand in the form of mortgage rates, and approval criteria, terms and conditions.

So historically, these approaches have helped close transactions in volatile and high-interest environments like today, and also in commercial sales. Most importantly, our offers satisfy ALL participants.

Transactions are accomplished through the use of private money, financial and estate planning instruments, insurance policies, a mixture of cash, notes, mortgages, alternative assets, and a rearrangement of timing or the sequence of events.

Start here

• What the main goal this sale is intended to accomplish for the seller?
• Why would the seller not want to keep it for themselves, family, or rental income?
• Is it vacant, occupied by the owner, tenant, Airbnb, friend or family crashing?
• If it was ever rented what was the rent?
• Has the owner already arranged for a definitive place to stay immediately after closing?
• In the next place will the seller be paying a mortgage or a lease?
• Is this their primary residence, and have they lived there for 2 of the past 5 years?
• Are there any open permits or unpermitted work?
• If the property is older was the roof, plumbing, electric, and septic replaced?
• Is the property free and clear? If not what mortgage(s) type, rate, original amount, and balance? (CLICK TO REVIEW HERE)
• Are they current on mortgage, insurance, COA/HOA, taxes?
• What mortgages are there (amount, balance, rate, fixed/var, fha/conv/rev/private, date due)?
• Was there ever a loan modification, forbearance, mortgage assistance, mortgage insurance, PACE financing, a bankruptcy, or foreclosure?