Manassas Buyer Success on a Tight Budget
When first connected with this buyer-client in mid-March, the budget given for our house hunt (given from a lender he had qualified with) gave the buyer many options. However, as our search got more serious and my buyer found a home or two he wanted to pursue, I began to question...well, more like interrogate, the buyer's choice of lender.
Why would I interrogate an unknown lender? Well, in a seller's market, the competition is fierce. Buyers need to work with reputable lenders. And from my interrogation of the buyer's choice of lender, I could tell he was not what I would consider reputable. In fact, when digging deeper on the buyer's first choice of lender, I found that lender to be working in an area that could only be called fraudulent. Next step, get the buyer to qualify with a reputable lender. That's when I referred him to two or three reputable lenders.
The buyer was stunned to find out his pre-qualification purchase price was cut dramatically once he started talking to reputable lenders. That meant a budget so tight we had only a handful of properties that worked in his price range in our entire county.
Once we narrowed the search to two properties, we saw both, he chose one and we wrote an offer ASAP. The buyer was able to offer a little more than list price on a newly renovated townhouse in order to cover part of the closing cost help he was requesting. In the meantime, we prayed no one else was submitting an offer. We had no more room to manuever in my buyer's budget.
Negotiations were easy. The seller was essentially a For Sale By Owner (FSBO.) He had no agent to advise him. He had just hired a limited service agent to throw it in the MLS. If we made a request, he said yes. The seller said yes to everything. He probably did more home inspection items than he would have if he would have had someone represent him. He also paid more in closing cost help then he would have if he would have had an agent. He probably would have netted more if he had hired a full service agent, but we didn't care. His lack of knowledge and expertise worked in our favor. Of course, I wouldn't let the seller skate on things like HOA violations that need to be corrected per our contract. Those were corrected and abated in writing.
My buyer got a fantastic deal on a very well done renovated Manassas City townhouse. He paid $192,000 and got the maximum allowable closing cost help.
If you want top notch representation, you don't have to be shopping the top of the market to get it. Give me a call and let's get started finding your Manassas, Bristow or Gainesville home. 703-402-0037.
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