Sell House - Check!

The old big house

Susan and I finally sold our house. She listed it with her company Farmer Properties on Thursday, March 24th and it went under contract three days later.  We had a second offer but those buyers eventually backed out. The buyer whose offer we accepted found our house online and showed the listing to their real estate agent. The agent was apparently at a wedding and a birthday party that day and unable to show the house to her client herself. She also had two funerals to attend somewhere during the process which didn’t allow her to attend other meetings. The agent called about availability of our home and asked “can’t you do any better than that?” regarding the commissions. Susan and I both had the stinking suspicion that their agent was shopping commissions for herself and not homes for her client. We showed our home to the client without the agent being present. Later that day they submitted an offer and after some brief negotiating the offer was accepted. We were under contract. The agent showed the house herself to the client and her husband a few days later. After that the buyer’s agent must have left the country because she did little else to further the process.

The buyers did not have a home inspection. A big no-no even if one had no intentions of asking for any repairs. After the inspection contingency was missed the financing contingency was the second to fall. Thanks to the buyer’s agent missing their deadline Susan and I could keep the buyer’s $3,500 earnest money check if for any reason the house didn’t close. The buyer needed another two weeks to get their loan approved. We agreed to extend the contract for an additional $1,500 in non-refundable earnest money. The two weeks came and went without a closing and Susan and I had to decide whether to put the house back on the market or extend the closing date a second time. We decided to extend the closing an additional week. We did have $5,000 in earnest money waiting for us if we closed or not. The object was to sell the home.

Anticipating a problem with the appraisal, Susan provided the appraiser with sales of suitable comparable homes listed in our area. We specifically chose the offer where we paid no closing costs but had a slightly lower sale’s price to help minimize any appraisal issues. The buyer was also applying for a conventional loan as opposed to a VA or FHA loan. This meant two things to Susan and I, 1) the buyer had some money, and 2) we wouldn’t be throttled into working with the FHA or VA where the buyer usually, but not always, has little or no funds and included an appraisal and inspection process that often burdens only the seller. Remember, the VA or FHA buyer motto “I ain’t got no money”. We would net basically the same amount with the buyer with enough funds to pay his own closing costs. When all was said and done, our home would be the highest sale in our area in quite some time. Subsequently, the lender required a Broker Price Opinion (BPO). A BPO is basically the opinion regarding price provided by an out-of-work real estate agent who is willing to drive to the home, go inside, do some market analysis, and provide a report to the lender all for the hefty sum of $45. We got through both the appraisal and BPO with everything still on track to close.

The buyer’s agent was also unable to attend the final walk-through for the buyers. I did the walk-through with the buyer and her husband.

Fortunately the closing occurred only three days into our second extension on May 16th. Unfortunately it didn’t fund until the next day. In my opinion, the buyer’s agent had under-represented her clients. She didn’t even attend the closing. She was on vacation. She also neglected to notice an $18,000 error in the closing statement that Susan brought to the attention of the closing attorney. The lender had posted an entire year of mortgage interest for the buyer to pay at closing instead of only interest to the end of the month.

It’s no wonder people don’t trust real estate agents.

In this case, the buyer was not represented, in my opinion. Their agent didn’t find the home, didn’t initially show the home, didn’t adequately encourage her client to get a home inspection, allowed the financing contingency to expire, didn’t review the closing statement, didn’t provide a termite letter to the buyer (one had been provided to her), and didn’t attend the final walk-through or the closing.
The buyers weren’t completely innocent though. We later found out that they chose to use a mortgage broker and their lender was “sub-prime”. Sub-prime lenders are synonymous for borrowers with a previous foreclosure or short-sale, or just plain bad credit.

The moral of the story here is know your agent and know your lender and be sure that they represent your interests and not their own. If not for the continued efforts of my wife we would have never sold our house. I had a good agent.

I have to laugh whenever I think of the Freakenomics chapter where they surmised that Realtor’s homes sold for more money and quicker because they work harder for themselves than they do for others. I laugh because they have no idea what a taskmaster my wife (she’s also my real estate agent) has been for the past six months.  We have painted, and repaired and updated without ceasing. We de-cluttered, de-personalized, had a garage sale (which I detest - I’d rather burn my belonging in the driveway than try to sell something that cost me $45, for a $1, and have the potential buyer offer me $0.50 for it and then, and this really happened, they stiff you for a $1 when they pay for several items.), donated stuff to charity, and gave away as much as we could bear. All at a great expense in time and money. The local Lowe’s home improvement store must have has a good spring sales season thanks to us. We worked so hard that I stopped training for Ironman in February thinking I’d lay-low for a week or so before getting back to it. I was wrong. I haven’t hit a lick in 3 months. Now that we’ve sold the house though I’m ready to get back with the program. That program might include our new project house. As my wife said "you've got your Ironman right here".

The new small digs via Google Cardboard Camera - New Project

Ultimately, the buyers got a great house in a great neighborhood and we were able to move on.

Thanks for reading.