Someone forwarded me an email recently about an idea he had had passed along.
The idea was that if you knew a neighborhood or area you wanted to live in.....
you would mail letters to homeowners in the neighborhood asking if they were willing to sell in the near future.
Nice idea.
You are in no hurry and you want to buy without paying a commission and having any competition to buy a nice property where you want to live!
Sounds right. However, the rest of it reads that once you reach a verbal agreement (which is worth the price of the paper it's printed on), you need to then hire an attory and meet all the requirements of your mortgage lender, hire an inspection, spar with the seller over the results of the inspection (if you were smart enough to have an inspection contingency written into the agreement that you verbally offered....hmmm....and make sure you have dug up comparable sales so you were knowlegable about what to offer, get an appraisal ordered, follow up with getting a title company to work with you and check the home's past history by getting a CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange) report. and making sure your attorney (at $350 an hour) gets the title search completed (for claims outstanding against the property), checks the tax records and ascertains the zoing laws.
Easy. Nothing you can't handle in your spare time and with some fairly generous cash outlay for the attorney. But, look, you are saving money, right? Money the seller would pay a buyer's broker to bring you to the table. Money he will gladly fork over to you in savings to him, right? Oh, that's right. He's not paying any commission either. So, why would he cut you a deal? You aren't represented except by the attorney, not a negotiator on your behalf. So, sorry, Charlie, you're on your own.
Do the work....take the time....no saving on commission either. Sounds perfect.
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