Back to Basics

So we're in a down market, I get it. What happens when that happens? Lenders and Realtors start to re-think what they are doing to get and take care of customers. We get back to basics.

My thought here is to help out members of the real estate community, but my hope is that this will also be helpful to potential home buyers and sellers. We all suffer from "the curse of knowledge" -- the idea that we know so much about this industry and, because of that, we may lose sight of things that our Clients don't know anything about.

Closing costs-
I can't tell you how many buyers (first-time and move-up) that I've talked to in the pre-qualification / pre-finding a house phase who are afraid to ask the seller to pay closing costs. They think that it might hurt the seller's feelings or keep the seller from taking their offer. Some even think that, if the seller is paying these costs, that the seller is going to have to write them a check to get the money to them.

BACK TO BASICS --

Home sellers - go ahead and offer to pay X closing costs for a buyer. If you have a buyer come along who does not understand that they can actually negotiate for you to pay them, you've taken away an objection and offered something of value that might help your home sell more quickly.

Home buyers - know that home sellers typically look at the bottom line (offer price - any concessions like closing costs) to decide if they are going to take an offer. So (without getting into tax implications) an offer of $105,000 with the seller paying $5,000 in closing costs is essentially the same as an offer of $100,000 straight away. If they have read this post and are already offering to pay the 5k, you've got one less thing to worry about! ;-)