Last week my son closed on his first home!!! However, it took his Realtor (i.e. me) almost a year a half to find the right place. I heard from him several times that I expect more from you and if you can't make it happen - I am sure someone else can --- admittedly he was just joking.
However, in order to get a good deal on a foreclosure or short sale - it requires a lot of patience. So just for fun I will walk through the failures and why he almost fired me.
#1 The short sale. His first offer was on a short sale - very nice home 2600 sq ft. Purchaser agreed - it took the bank almost three months to finally say no - bottom line purchaser and rented it for some point in time and therefore did not qualify for the short sale.
#2 The almost new foreclosure - This was a smaller home in great neighborhood - we made an offer about 10K below ask. They countered back at asking price - we found out by searching tax records that the foreclosure price was about at what we had offered and that we could not get title insurance without paying a 1% redemption bond fee since our offer would be over foreclosure price. We waited hoping the price would come down - someone else paid full price - it was a great deal. He almost fired me....
#3 The great deal on a foreclosure. This was a Bank of America foreclosure about 15 years old - in excellent shape. The property had not moved and the bank dropped the bottom out of it from 165,000 to 135,000. Since we had looked at the property before at the higher price we knew it was a great deal and immediately wrote the offer. We heard back from the real estate firm that the offer was accepted. Yea!!! Then the next day we get the call - that because another offer had came in the bank was not accepting the offer but going to do highest and best - yes you read correctly - in the small print the offer is not final until after review. Bottom line 15 offers came in and it sold for 150K cash.
By this point my son was no longer getting excited when we made an offer or looked at a house....
#4 We made an offer on a nice home with 2 car attached and 2 car detached. We had been watching the home as a short sell and we know the neighborhood. They countered back a few thousand less than asking we withdrew our offer and waited.....
#5 Made an offer on another relocation house - no deal....
#6 The wait from #4 paid off they dropped the price 10K so we are closer. We made a lower offer - they countered - we countered back to the price we were at before - they accepted - we closed - I DID NOT GET FIRED AFTER ALL!!!!
We learned a lot of lessons in this process that I have been able to apply much more successfully for other clients - i.e. I sold multiple foreclosures to others during that time.
Comments(37)