By Living Room Realty, September 10, 2019
A combination of things led to this deal’s success and happy closing. Mitch and Chloe are young and in love. They were next door neighbors to start and have now been together a couple of years. Mitch’s co-worker Kara bought a house from us this summer and sent him over to help him. The budget was $385k and for anything as close-in as they wanted it was going to be a challenge. We looked at all the old, all the new, and then started looking at things just a bit higher in price.
This house had just come back on the market for $399k. The condition was rough but the location was killer, just one block off Dekum and 18th. I was sort of hoping they wouldn’t like it because I could tell by looking at it that inspections would be a nightmare. Buuuuut, of course they loved it.
I called the lender to see if there was any room to go any higher and because interest rates had just dropped we could offer asking price. We were up against a cash offer so I urged them to write a letter to the sellers with a picture and the sellers fell in love with them because they were also teachers. They accepted our offer and inspections began.
First issue, roof was toast. Second, sewer was on a party line and the city requires you separate and install new line. Third, because roof was so bad there was a ton of mold in the attic. All told we needed $21k worth of work. In a normal deal this would be very hard to achieve. It took a lot of negotiating back and forth but the one thing that was in our favor was that it had sale failed a week before for the same issues. There was no way that any buyer wouldn’t ask for these things. If they wanted to sell, they had to address it.
So, the outcome was the sellers did not want to do the repairs during the deal and risk potentially holding up closing to schedule it all, so they pre-paid all three contractors directly from escrow for the work to be done after closing. The buyers were thrilled and all of the work is scheduled to be completed before they move in. These clients were perfect angels to work with and I’m so stoked we got all the major things covered!
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