This blog entry is the first of a series. I wanted to share the journey of listing-to-sold or buyer-agency-to sold and in many cases, the mixture of the two journeys.

My side of this sale was on the LISTING side and our journey began back in June 2023. It wasn't until August until we finally executed a listing agreement after a bit of back and forth with explanations, consultations, recommendations, and corrections. Multiple trips to the home, many texts and emails all lead to finally listing this home for $159,900 and selling for $172,000. 

Interesting fact: the seller was offered $125,000 cash for the home. This home needed work. The septic hadn't been pumped in at least 20 years, there was only a small wall mounted heater in one room of the home, the kitchen needed a complete renovation and the home sloped to one corner... not to mention the detached garage needing structural work. By the way, there was an old gutted antique bus on the the property with a work shed built around it with holes in the roof. 

Why did the seller call me and ultimately hire me? I told him that a cash offer of $125,000 may be smart given the condition of the home but I wanted to provide a report detailing his net profit if I sold it at varying price points including all fees and with MINOR concessions or repairs to close the sale. Ultimately, after doing my homework, it made sense to list the home for sale. In fairness to my client regardless of the work I already put into advising him, I gave hime a temporary exclusion with the cash buyer and agreed to a hugely discounted fee if I brokered the deal. I attempted to contact this cash buyer multiple times and he never responded. Good thing my client didn't get wrapped into that one!

I actually put this home under contract TWICE within a two week span of time with two different buyer (first buyer getting cold feet) with the closing date never changing! 

I believe in looking into the agents that present offers on my listings because when there are multiple offers, credibility, experience, good communication and attention to detail are all factors in getting your offer accepted when there are more than one to choose from! Moral of that small story is to hire a good buyer's agent that you vetted if you are serious about buying a home. 

I provided a side-by-side comparison of all 9 of the offers including things like buyer closing cost concession requests, type of financing, closing date, offer price, pre-approval vs pre-qualification, and bottom line profit. In every case, I always left the $125,000 cash offer on the report to show the benefit of working with me even though he paid my fee. My client told me after reviewing the Closing Disclosure that it was WORTH every penny and more!

After landing on the offer that ultimately would make it to the closing table, the home inspections revealed a non-functioning submersible pump in the pump chamber of the septic. Of course, even though the buyer's offer was as-is with the right to walk-away from an unsatisfactory inspection, I factored in an allowance for SOME repairs so that the projected bottom line profit could be realistically obtained without jeopardizing the sale. My projected profit was withing 1.5% of actual!

Working through repairs, permits, contractors, and appraisers is all par for the course. Crazy thing here is the electrician seemed to rub the building inspector the wrong way inadvertantly and coincidenatally, the inspector did not pass the original work. The electrician was adement about the quality and correctness of his work. The seller was open to getting someone else to fix the issue and I really thought the added expense of paying a second electrician is unnecessary. "Let's just get him back to do it how the inspector wants it". The electrician came back the same day and made the corrections and the inspector signed off! Honestly, the original work looked a lot nicer but the building inspector runs that show. 

My client have vacation time already planned, it was important to have this all wrapped up in a timely manner. In fact, I sugested getting documents signed ahead of time with power of attorney given to the closing attorney for small details that come up. This allowed my client to rest easy knowing everything would happen smoothly even when they were away. 

So yes, this home sold over asking but thankfully there was amazing attorneys working with us and an amazing buyer's agent on the other side of this deal, Erica Pearson who I paid from the proceeds given to me from the seller. The way I see it, the seller wanted to sell their home and I knew that in order to do this, I needed to charge a fee to of course cover my expenses, time, marketing and probably equally as important, if not more, the fee to cover what the buyer would have had to pay out of pocket to their agent. The seller was happy to pay it because even with some repair costs and real estate commission, his profit was 22% HIGHER than selling it on his own with no commission or repairs.