Oh, the words I really don’t like to hear from a buyer or a seller. You know the phrase “My friend told me…” Now, I was talking to a buyer on the phone the other day about a home they were looking at and about what was the best way to finance it in their situation.
I gave them the advice I had for them since they didn’t qualify for a traditional loan, that they really only had a few other choices. Those other choices were lease option, owner financing or just wait. There was one more and that was assume a loan, but that wasn’t an easy one since they didn’t qualify for a loan right now and you still have to get qualified for most assumptions of a mortgage.
They told me that they would talk about it and get back to me. The next day they called and said “We talked to our friend and she said lease options and owner financing are illegal” I said “That isn’t true, do you mind me asking where your friend got your information?” They said “She used to be a real estate agent.”
I said “Do you think there might be a reason she “USED” to be an agent? Lease options and owner financing are certainly aren’t illegal in fact they are done every day and do you think if they were illegal you could actually get the contracts at any store that sells contracts? I’m going to give you the number of two real estate attorneys and you make the call and ask them if they are illegal. I promise you are going to find out that you are hiring me for knowledge and I’m great at what I do. I don’t want to offend your friend, but it was mis-information like this that put a lot of agents out of the business the past couple years.”
These buyers have since put an offer in on a property using owner financing and are no longer taking advice from their friend. She later told me it was hard to correct her friend and had to basically tell her friend that she couldn’t trust her advice since she was as wrong on something as simple as owner financing or lease options. I told her there was nothing simple about owner financing or lease options, but there was a reason so many people left the business in the past few years.
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