I just ended up a phone conversation with an atlanta homebuyer who said "I want to see homes before doing a pre-qualification". This buyer found me through my website and asked me if I can show him some homes first. To me, this comes from somebody who thinks that he can buy any house he likes and that the bank will lend him the money for sure. I offered to meet him at my office to give him a consultation and to have him talk to a loan officer before I show him any homes and he said "No I don't have time for that since I run my store from morning to late night everyday...". So I gave him the number of a good loan officer that I work with and he accepted to call because I told him that it was very important to do that before seeing any home. Another day, the loan officer called me to tell me that this person called him but did not want to get pre-qualified at all. After a few days, I called this buyer to follow up and I tried to explain to him that our company's policy is to meet anybody that we don't know at our office for safety reasons and he responded "No...I meet Realtors everyday at my store and I am seeing homes already so thank you..". My answer to this person was "Ok, then I wish you the best of luck, good bye".
This tells me there are agents out there who are showing homes to buyers without a pre-qualification. Besides the fact that this is waste of time, most importantly this hurts the buyer because they fall in love with the home and will try to do anything to get a loan. Later, their monthly payments will be too much to handle and the consequences are numerous: will have to work more to keep up with the payments, will not have any money left to fix or remodel, will not have any money left to take a vacation and etc etc... I believe this is one of the main reasons why there are a lot of foreclosures. So this is why I ask: Please stop taking buyers without having them pre-qualified with a reputable loan officer or lender.
Perhaps I blew it but it seems that this person was working with an agent already so I could not help him. Perhaps, this buyer was not motivated to buy but just wanted to look?. Is this similar to taking listings whose sellers are not motivated to sell?. Has this happened to you before?
Giuliana
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