Bought It, Fixed It, Ready To Retail It?
Every answer leads to 2 more questions. I love this business!
Help! House is almost finished. Ads are running. Calls are starting to come in. How do I make sure I don't end up taking the house off the market only to have the buyer's financing fall through?
Can I take a Non-Refundable earnest money payment while we wait for the bank to give us a nod? (not preferred. I need as close to a sure thing as I can get here).
Or could I take no earnest money, sign a P&S with as many buyers as are interested, and whomever closes first gets the deal?
Please help. I know there must be some way to avoid this trap. I've rented, bought SubTo, and Lease Optioned houses but this is my first time trying to outright retail a house.
Maybe get the buyers to sign non-exclusive option agreements while they work on the financing?
Or should I only deal with "pre-approved" buyers?
TYIA,
JohnCl
PS: I love this site. Thanks again to all the contributors for your advice. You have saved me countless hours and $$$.
If I were the listing agent of a property and wanted as airtight a situation as possible, I would deal with buyers that were pre-approved--not pre-qualified. Buyers that had a letter in hand from their lender stating the loan amount and purchase price they were approved for.
This gets 2 birds with 1 stone--not only minimizing risk of buyer not getting the mortgage, but also shortening time frame for satisfaction of mortgage contingency and also closing date because the paperwork was completed. All the lender would need would be purchase contract and appraisal. In addition, I would require the buyer to provide a BFI (Buyer's Financial Info).
Perfect advise...I wouldn't have said it better!
So it sounds like I'm going to be stuck having to pick one buyer and go through the whole loan process with them (unless I get lucky and find one with a pre-approval letter).
For people that don't have any sort of pre-approval letter I was looking at making up a 1 page application sheet of some sort (sounds like the BFI Nancy mentioned). I would then foward this info to my broker (name, social security #, DOB, Salary, etc). He would give me the skinny on whether or not he had anything that he thinks would work. I don't think he would waste my time or his with someone he wasn't 99.9% sure of. Maybe charge a $50.00 application fee to make sure they are not just "shopping"?
Most definitely a buyer with a pre-approval letter goes to the top of the stack.
Has any one else done this?
JohnCl
[ Edited by JohnCl on Date 05/06/2004 ]
JohnCl,
When a buyer comes along for your property, ask if they are working with a mortgage company and are pre-approved (and make sure they understand the difference between pre-qualified and pre-approved). If not, you could tell them that you are only entertaining offers from pre-approved buyers. If they're serious and motivated, they'll get cracking. If they are pre-approved, tell them you need a letter from their lender or alternatively, ask them for permission to speak to the lender. Then you can tell the lender specifically what you want in the letter.
Another point I would have to make, Is when purchasing a home the buyer has to pay for an appraisal. Unless you are paying for it, I would suggest having only one buyer at a time. I have found most people would love to close on their new home ASAP so they are usually very good about getting all the documents to the broker .
Good Luck
Lori
[addsig]
Lori
I see you are from pittsburgh area. I am currently having some problems with the realtors I am working with on the sell end of properties. Seems they aren't a motivated as I would like them to be. Question? do you use realtors to sell your properties and if so, in your opinion, do most of them fight you every step of the way or are the bending over backwards to help you achieve your goals? my listing agent is wonderful, energetic, determined, but very inexperienced. and she is getting resistance from other agents in her office who refuse to :think outside the box". this is a concern for me and I was wondering what you might suggest I do. Any help would be very much appreciated.
Dave