Tips To Seal The Deal On A Home

Tips To Seal The Deal On A Home

When you’re trying to negotiate on buying or selling a home and one of the involved parties won’t budge, here are a few practices real estate agents use to move the process along. Try these tips and see if you can move forward and close the deal.

Rent-Back

With housing prices at a high and the moving process being a notoriously daunting one, sometimes the seller needs to act on an opportunity to make a sale but isn’t quite ready to pack up and leave. A common practice in this case is for the buyer to allow the seller to stay put when the escrow closes for an agreed upon period. In exchange, the seller rents out the home he once owned, paying money to the new owner – usually the monthly mortgage.

Sometimes, buyers will even offer a free-of-charge rent-back, as oftentimes, the date of closing isn’t the same date they’ll move out of their current home, meaning rent and new mortgage costs might overlap. Taking advantage of a rent-back eliminates this excess expenditure while allowing both parties to take their time in the moving process.

Buying Down Interest Rates

Let’s face it: sometimes, the amount of money a mortgage lender approves us for seems like a bit of a financial stretch. In these cases, the buyer can often “ purchase” a better interest rate by paying around 1% of the total amount of the loan. If the seller is willing to pay these costs, the buyer can lock in the rate, paying a little extra money up front and saving more in the long run. How does this benefit the seller? Buying down the interest rate is pretty much guaranteed to cost less than a significant price reduction. And the buyer, of course, saves money from month to month, cutting down on living expenses.

When real estate deals seem to come to a standstill, realtors have to crack the code, figure out what it is the buyer and seller want and need to be satisfied with the deal, and help them enact that in a practical way. Using these less commonly practiced means of saving money can be productive for both parties involved in the process of buying and selling a home, helping to close the deal efficiently.