By Living Room Realty, February 22, 2021
We connected with Rachel to tour a few homes. Over our tours we got to know Rachel more and fell in love with her personality and love of life. Every photo update we got from Rachel, she was climbing mountains, biking trails, enjoying the snow and essentially being one with nature at every turn.
And then we got a wonderful update that she was adding squishable Meru to her family to go on more adventures with.
And their next adventure was finding a new home. Her goal for 2021 was to officially buy a home, so we went to work. The condo market was softening at this time we started looking, but once 2021 hit we started to feel the competition rise even with condos due to the extreme lack of inventory. So, when one came up that was at a great price and had affordable HOA dues we were all over it competing against 4 other offers. Rachel put her best foot forward and was able to steal it away from the market. We celebrated the little victories along the way, but there were also quite a few hurdles that we had to overcome as a team.
The first one we got hit with was a huge discrepancy between the advertised HOA dues that selling side came to us with and then told us there was a mistake. Rachel was cool and collected and we negotiated upfront for the discrepancy with a substantial seller credit due to the increased dues she would now have to pay. The seller accepted her proposal, and we set to work scheduling all her inspections. Most everything was seamless in getting inspections and contractors into her unit to see what needed to be addressed. Then our next hurdle came, we hadn’t received HOA docs yet which are vital in evaluating the health of an HOA. We kept checking in but to no avail the selling side was having major difficulty in locating the docs from a 3rd party resource. This made us uncomfortable, but we knew that as soon as we got those docs we were going to have to work quickly along with Rachel’s HOA attorney, Damon Henrie w/ Henrie Law.
We ended up getting them in close to the end of the transaction and with speedy and thorough work, Damon was able to help Rachel analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the HOA. For the majority of what he saw, the HOA was healthy BUT there was another discrepancy with the HOA dues and they were actually even higher than the selling side had told us. This was a huge frustration and Rachel was actually ready to terminate the sale. We understood how she felt and let her know that this actually could work out to her advantage since she was ready to walk away. We encouraged her to give us the terms it would take for her to feel good about moving forward with the transaction since there had been so much up and down in terms of what had been advertised and what were the actual facts.
Rachel wanted to think it over. She loved the condo, and knew it fit her needs and with the way the market was trending she knew that this was a good opportunity for her. So, she came to us with her terms to reduce the sales price or she was out.
We presented her terms to the listing agent and fought hard for them to see why they were getting hit with a price reduction so close to closing. They didn’t like it, but ended up seeing things from Rachel’s perspective and granted her her price reduction.
When we let Rachel know that the sellers accepted her terms and that we were moving to closing, we could feel the peace and burden fall off her shoulders knowing that she was coming out on top.
Rachel, we admire the strength and courage it took to get through this transaction and we are so excited that you have accomplished your 2021 goal so early in the year. Can’t wait to see what great heights you will climb to this year. Cheers to you and Meru!
