By Living Room Realty, November 20, 2019
I got a strange text from someone on a Sunday afternoon saying they were looking for a REALTOR® that was responsive and flexible with their time, was that me? I said yes and they asked me to meet them at this vacant house the next morning. I was a more than a little creeped out by their tone but I looked them up on Facebook and saw we had one mutual friend so I agreed to meet. I told my business partner the address and that if she didn’t hear from me by 10:30am to call the police. Luckily, she was exactly what her profile picture looked like and not a murderer but you can never be too careful in my line of work. I’ve seen and heard of some crazy shit!
She had gone to the open house that Sunday with friends and loved it but when we walked through it together and I pointed out the amount of work it needed she decided to pass. I was relieved because it looked like a nightmare deal. Hours later she called again and wanted to make an offer so I wrote it up. The agent on the other end is an agent I’ve had several deals with and we have a good rapport. We acknowledged off the bat that getting this house to finance and the amount of repairs needed would be very tricky, but we both committed to gather all the bids and do all the legwork to keep it alive.
This house might be the roughest one yet. The only inspections we got lucky on were sewer and radon but the rest were enough to make a buyer run far away. This particular buyer had been looking in her price range for close to a year and was using a first-time buyer program that was expiring so we had to make this work if possible. We got bids on bids on bids and just asked for the world. We knew we wouldn’t get it all but we knew what we needed to have to stay in the deal.Over several days of back and forth nail biting negotiations we got what we needed to make it work.
This year has been the year of really tough deals. As the market is shifting, buyers have some negotiating power again. It’s a good time to try to buy if you are on the edge of thinking you may have to rent forever. Let me get you there.
