Confidence in the sale is worth more than price. Hey guys, this is Brad from ProbateResource.com. At ProbateResource.com, we are a fantastic online resource for anyone going through the probate process. We have the website at ProbateResource.com and we have a fantastic YouTube channel to help you with all the questions you might have about going through the probate process. We’re also a real estate solutions company. We specialize in the world of probate and inheritance properties.
We buy properties for cash all over the US and we have a fantastic network of real estate agents that we work with all over the US that can help you get your property sold. So whether you want a fast cash offer or you want to list it on the market, we can help you. Go to our website at ProbateResource.com and fill out the form to get started. Okay, so let’s talk today about a topic in regards to confidence in sale versus sale price.
And this came about because I am actually this past weekend, I have listed my mother and father-in-law’s house for sale. They are planning on downsizing out of their big house that my wife and her sisters grew up in and they are moving closer to my wife and my kids or to me and my wife and my kids, and they’re going to be downsizing into just a little three-bedroom ranch house.
So we found them a new house, we put that one under contract and we put their house on the market and put it on our contract. And it was crazy. We had multiple offers and they live in a very desirable neighborhood, very desirable area, and I priced their house appropriately so that it would sell fast. Also, the house is well maintained, well taken care of. They’ve been there for 32 years now in that house and they’re ready to sell it to someone else, hopefully another young family that’s going to raise their children there.
So one of the things that came up in the process, and I’ve been doing real estate for a long time, bought a lot of houses from a lot of people. I bought houses. I’m also an agent too. So I’ve listed houses, although most of the time I do more buying than I do actually listing houses. What I’ve found is that many times a lot of people actually care more, and I guess the reason I say care is because the anxiety is more in terms of is the deal going to go through versus how much I’m going to get for my house.
That’s not to say that price doesn’t matter because to some people price does matter. But what I have found is that a lot of people like surety and confidence in that sale going through, especially in cases like my in-laws where they have another house under contract and their house that they live in now, they paid it off however many number of years ago and they’re just going to be taking the cash from this sale and using it to buy the new house and not have a mortgage.
Good for them, right? We all strive to maybe have our mortgage paid off one day for those of us who do have a mortgage. And those of us, some of you guys who are retired, maybe you’ve already paid your house off many years ago. Good for you. That’s awesome. So in their case, they wanted to know that the sale for their house was going to go through on the other side because they didn’t want to end up having to at the last minute, either bail out on the contract on their new house that they were going to buy or having to go get a temporary mortgage or even take money out of some of their investment accounts in order to be able to pay cash like they had promised on the other house.
We did put a contingency clause in the purchase contract for their new house that they did have to sell their other house. So there’s that, but it still creates anxiety, right? It still creates this uncertainty as to whether that deal is going to go through. And I’m going to share this story right now to tell you that, and I’ve made other videos about this, that the highest offer is not always the best offer.
So just yesterday we, after my phone exploding and multiple offers, we went back and forth and negotiated some offers and we came to an agreement on an offer with a family that wanted to purchase this property, and they came forward with a really, really good offer. On paper, it looked awesome. From a purchase price and seller net to my in-laws, it looked great. There were no contingencies in there about selling their house. There was no financing contingencies. They had waived all the contingencies. They were willing to close in two and a half weeks.
I mean, based on this offer, they were really gung-ho about this house. And mind you, they went out to the house, they said they loved it. I was there. I met their agent there at the showing before they showed the house, and they really, really just genuinely love the house and so did a lot of other people. But they came forward with the strongest offer and the highest offer. Okay? That we got.
So ultimately we decided to go with that. I looked at all the facts and I’ve been doing this a long time, said, “This looks like a pretty good deal right here, so let’s go for it.” So that they agreed. We went for it, we put it under contract. What happened? Five hours later after we signed the contract and went binding on the contract, the buyers backed out of the deal. Five hours later. They only had it under contract for five.
They haven’t even done a home inspection yet, and they got cold feet and changed their mind. And I was just blown away. I’m sitting here like, “Are you serious?” And we had taken it off the market. We had canceled all the rest of the showings for the day. We had showings booked out for days. I mean, this neighborhood is really, really desirable that they live in, barely anything ever comes up for sale. It’s in a really, really good area. So super desirable.
I knew the house would sell quick and we’d have multiple offers. Right? All of a sudden, my mother-in-law is like, “Well, what does that mean? If they’re backing out, then all the other people are going to back out and is this going to go through? “And mind you, this offer was a good price offer and it had great conditions in it, but it fell apart because sometimes offers just fall apart. So ultimately, we still had a backup offer.
I went to the backup offer people and I said, “Hey guys, look, here’s the deal. This contract just fell out. We’re about to push it back live out on the market again. And I know we’re going to get multiple offers because we’ve already gotten multiple offers, but you guys really, really love the house. You really, really wanted it. You were like the second runners up in terms of the best offer to date. Give me your best offer. I’m going to give you one more chance. You’ve got till nine o’clock the next morning. Bring me your best offer.
Bring me your best number because as you know and I know, this thing is going to bring multiple offers, and we could go through this showing charade, but all my sellers want is they want to know that this house and this deal is going to go through.” So they came through with a really good offer. We went under contract this morning with a backup offer. I never actually even had to change the status on the system. It still says it’s under contract, right?
And that was good because sometimes when you’ve listed a property for sale and you’ve gone under contract and then it falls out of contract and it goes back active again, some agents call that the kiss of death. I actually had another property myself this past weekend where that happened. It was a property that we bought to flip. We did a rehab, we put it on the market, multiple offers, went under contract immediately within the first day. And we had a really good buyer, really strong offer.
We were supposed to close on that deal this week. The buyer was already through underwriting with their mortgage lender. The appraisal was back. I had already made all the repairs. We were all set ducks in a row to close on the property this week. And Saturday the buyer got cold feet and says, “I don’t want to go through with the sale. I can’t buy it. I want to terminate.” He terminated his earnest money deposit. I got to keep his earnest money deposit.
So I mean, I did get some money out of it, but I would’ve much rather had that deal closed this week and get more money for it than the earnest money. But whatever, it is what it is. I put it back on the market. We’re getting showings again, but we’re not getting showings at the rate that we were getting before because many people question why the property fell out of contract, and they make assumptions about that. So you have to pay attention to that when you are listing a property.
So the purpose of this video though, I know I’m rambling, was about confidence in an offer and how do you pick a good confident offer. Well, you have to look at all of the factors of the offer to understand how strong of an offer it is. You don’t just look at purchase price. You don’t just look at time to close. You have to look at all the factors and make the best determination about all of them.
And obviously, like I mentioned earlier, the first offer we got, we looked at all the factors, everything looked great, and they terminated five hours later. It was the craziest thing. I don’t understand why, but things like that can happen. So what does that mean? Well, if you’re looking for a sure sale on a property, don’t necessarily care as much about the dollar amount, maybe your better bet is to go with a variable, very reputable investor to buy your house.
Now, not all houses qualify for an investor, right? You need to understand whether it would be a good fit. But for instance, such as us at Probate Resource, we buy houses for cash all over the [inaudible 00:09:24]. We’ll buy them as is. We buy inherited properties all of the time. And one of the things that we do is I like to operate my business differently than other investors out there.
If I tell you I’m going to buy your house, by golly, I’m going to try to buy your house. I try if at all possible, not to back out of contracts. And I can tell you right now, honestly, camera to camera right here. In the past I’ve been doing real estate now, buying and selling, buying houses, investment properties. I’m now in my, actually here in a few weeks is eight years. I’ve been doing this for eight years.
In eight years I have terminated six contracts. I know the number, six contracts in eight years. Out of hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of deals, six contracts. That’s it. And all, but one of them was during the due diligence period. The only one that wasn’t in the due diligence period, me and the seller already had an understanding that this deal, basically I was pitching this deal to a hedge fund because the seller wanted to get $10,000 more than what I was offering.
And I said, “Hey man, I’ll buy it today for this price. I’m good at this number. I’ve looked at it. I’m good at this number. I’ll do zero due diligence. I’ll buy it next week for this price.” He said, “Well…” He was going through a divorce. He said, “I really need to get $10,000 more because I have to share some of this money with my soon to be ex-wife.”
And I said, “Sure, no problem. That’s fine. Let me try this hedge fund over here and see if we can get them to bite.” And they bit. But then they terminated the deal and the deal fell apart. So technically when they terminated, it was a day after our due diligence period has expired. But we already had an understanding and a written understanding that this whole deal was contingent upon them buying the property for X.
And really all I was going to make on it was basically the equivalent of what a commission would’ve been. I was essentially representing him as an agent, but I still had kind of an open purchase contract to buy his house. Because I told him, I said, “My offer for this is still good. I’ll buy it for this today. I’m good at that number.” But he really needed that extra 10 grand, and it ended up not working out.
He declined my offer. We both mutually agreed to terminate. He let me have my earnest money back, even though it was outside of the thing because I was very honest and straightforward with him through the whole thing. Right? And in that case, the sad part was actually the house ended up going into foreclosure and he lost the house into foreclosure. So he really should have taken my offer, but that divorce was nasty.
I’m not going to get into any more of that in this video. But we can make you an offer on your house that we believe in, unlike you have to understand, I’ve done a lot of videos about this. There are investors out there who will make you an offer on your house, and it’s kind of like a bait and switch offer. They’re going to tie you up, and then they’re going to pull the rug out from under you, and they’re going to leave you hanging again.
So you need to make sure you’re working with a reputable company if you’re going to go the investor route, and you need to understand some of the contract things to look out for. I’ve got other videos about that. I’m not going to get into that in video. Go check out some of my other videos where I talk about contract red flags and what to look for, those sort of things. So I hope this video helped you out today. I hope it helps you make a decision about what you want to do with your house.
I hope that our website at Probate Resource and our YouTube channel is helping you through the probate process. That’s the entire intent of this channel and this website is to help people through that process. So if you have a property that you need to sell, whether you want a quick cash offer, and press that easy button, as they say. Who was that that did that years ago? I think it was Staples had the easy button years ago. You want the easy way out.
You want a cash offer. You want us to just take it off your hands, we’d be happy to make you a cash offer on that property, or if you feel like you want to go the traditional route, get top dollar for it, like I said earlier, we have a fantastic network of real estate agents all across the country who are probate and inheritance specialists. We’d be happy to connect you with one of our real estate agent partners all over the country. So go to ProbateResource.com, fill out the form there. The link’s below in the video, and hope you have a great day. Hope you enjoyed the video. Thanks again. Bye-bye.
CONFIDENCE in the sale is WORTH MORE than price
Hello everyone, Brad here from ProbateResource.com.
We’re your comprehensive online resource for navigating the complexities of probate. Our website, ProbateResource.com, and our informative YouTube channel are here to answer all your probate-related questions. As a dedicated real estate solutions company, we specialize in assisting individuals with probate and inherited properties.
We purchase properties nationwide for cash and collaborate with a vast network of real estate agents across the US to ensure your property sells. Whether you prefer a quick cash offer or a traditional listing, we’ve got you covered. Visit ProbateResource.com and complete the form to begin the process.
Maximizing Sale Price vs. Guaranteed Sale for Inherited Properties
Now, let’s delve into a crucial topic: prioritizing a confident sale versus maximizing the sale price.
This subject is particularly relevant to me because this past weekend, I listed my in-laws’ family home for sale. They’re downsizing from the spacious house where my wife and her sisters grew up, relocating closer to us, and opting for a cozy three-bedroom ranch.
We secured a new home for them, placed it under contract, and simultaneously listed their existing residence. The response was overwhelming; we received multiple offers due to the highly desirable neighborhood and appropriate pricing. The house itself is in excellent condition, meticulously maintained over the 32 years they’ve lived there. Now,they’re ready to pass it on to another family.
Throughout this process, something interesting surfaced. As someone with extensive real estate experience, both as a buyer and an agent, I’ve observed that for many individuals, the anxiety surrounding whether a deal will close often outweighs concerns about the final sale price.
While price certainly matters, especially for those with specific financial goals, the desire for a secure and confident sale is paramount. In cases like my in-laws, where they’re purchasing another property and relying on the proceeds from their current home, the certainty of a successful transaction provides immense peace of mind.
The Highest Offer Isn’t Always the Best
It’s a wonderful accomplishment to have a mortgage paid off, a goal many of us strive for. Some of you, especially those retired, may have already achieved this milestone – congratulations!
In my in-laws’ case, they wanted absolute certainty that their current home would sell because they didn’t want to face last-minute complications with their new purchase. They wanted to avoid backing out of the contract, obtaining a temporary mortgage, or liquidating investments to fulfill their cash offer.
While we included a contingency clause in the purchase contract for their new home, stipulating the sale of their existing residence, anxiety and uncertainty persisted. This brings me to a crucial point I’ve emphasized in other videos: the highest offer isn’t always the best offer.
Yesterday, after a flurry of phone calls and multiple offers, we successfully negotiated and accepted an offer from a family eager to purchase my in-laws’ home. Their offer was exceptionally strong on paper, with a high purchase price and excellent net proceeds for my in-laws. It had no contingencies regarding the sale of their existing home or financing, and they were prepared to close in just two and a half weeks.
When the “Perfect” Offer Crumbles: A Cautionary Tale in Real Estate
Based on this offer, their enthusiasm for the house was undeniable. They had visited the property, expressed their admiration, and their agent confirmed their genuine affection for it. While many others loved the house, this family presented the strongest and highest offer we received.
Considering all the facts and my experience, I advised we accept the offer. It seemed like an excellent deal. My in-laws agreed, and we moved forward, putting the house under contract. However, a mere five hours later, after the ink had barely dried, the buyers backed out.
They hadn’t even conducted a home inspection yet. It was baffling. They got cold feet and changed their minds. I was astounded. We had already taken the house off the market, canceled all remaining showings, and had a full schedule of appointments for days ahead. This is a highly sought-after neighborhood where properties rarely become available.
Naturally, my mother-in-law was concerned. She wondered if other potential buyers would follow suit and if the sale would ultimately fall through. This offer had been strong in both price and terms, but sometimes, even the best-looking deals collapse. Fortunately, we still had a backup offer.
From Backup Offer to Winning Bid: How a Failed Deal Led to a Secure Sale
I reached out to the backup offer holders, explaining the situation and offering them another chance. I emphasized their genuine interest in the house and urged them to present their best offer by the following morning, knowing full well we would likely receive multiple bids. I reminded them that my sellers prioritized a secure and confident sale over a protracted showing process.
They responded with an excellent offer, and we went under contract that very morning. The listing status never even changed; it still shows as “under contract.” This was advantageous because in real estate, a property going back to active status after falling out of contract can sometimes be seen as a red flag.
Coincidentally, I experienced a similar situation with another property over the weekend. We had purchased it for a fix-and-flip, listed it, received multiple offers, and quickly went under contract with a seemingly strong buyer.
We were poised to close on that deal this very week. The buyer had successfully navigated the underwriting process, the appraisal was complete, and all necessary repairs had been made. Everything was aligned for a smooth closing. Then, on Saturday, the buyer abruptly changed their mind, citing cold feet and terminating the contract. They forfeited their earnest money deposit, which I retained.
While I did receive some compensation, I would have much preferred closing the deal and securing a higher profit. However, such is the nature of real estate. I relisted the property and am receiving showings again, though not at the same rate as before. This is because many potential buyers question why the deal fell through and often make assumptions based on that information. It’s a crucial factor to consider when listing a property.
Evaluating Offers Beyond Price
I know I’ve been digressing, but the purpose of this video is to discuss the importance of confidence in an offer and how to identify a truly strong one. It’s crucial to evaluate all aspects of an offer, not just the purchase price or closing timeline. You must consider every factor and make an informed decision based on a comprehensive assessment.
As I mentioned earlier, the first offer we received seemed ideal in every aspect, yet it unexpectedly fell through after just five hours. It was a bewildering experience, highlighting the unpredictable nature of real estate.
So, what does this mean for you? If you prioritize a secure and guaranteed sale over maximizing the sale price, partnering with a reputable real estate investor might be the optimal solution.
Choosing Certainty: Selling Your Inherited Property to a Reputable Investor
Of course, not all houses are suitable for an investor. It’s essential to assess whether your property aligns with their criteria. For instance, at Probate Resource, we purchase homes nationwide for cash, as-is, and frequently work with inherited properties.
I strive to differentiate my business from other investors by operating with integrity and transparency. When I commit to buying your house, I am genuinely committed. I make every effort to avoid backing out of contracts. In fact, I can honestly say that in my eight years of experience buying and selling investment properties, I’ve consistently upheld this principle.
Confession: 6 Terminated Contracts in 8 Years (And Lessons Learned)
In eight years, I’ve terminated a mere six contracts out of hundreds of deals. All but one occurred during the due diligence period. The exception involved a seller going through a difficult divorce who needed an extra $10,000 beyond my offer. I agreed to pitch the deal to a hedge fund, which initially expressed interest but later backed out, causing the deal to collapse.
Technically, their termination occurred a day after our due diligence period, but we had a prior written agreement making the entire deal contingent upon the hedge fund’s purchase. Essentially, my profit would have been equivalent to a commission, as I was effectively acting as the seller’s agent while maintaining an open purchase contract. I had offered to buy the house at my price, but he desperately needed the additional funds.
Unfortunately, the deal with the hedge fund didn’t materialize. He declined my original offer, and we mutually agreed to terminate the contract. He returned my earnest money, even though it was technically outside the due diligence period, due to my honesty and transparency throughout the process. Tragically, the house ultimately went into foreclosure, highlighting the importance of carefully evaluating offers and prioritizing a secure sale.
Beware of Bait-and-Switch Investors
We’re committed to making genuine offers that we stand behind. I’ve covered this extensively in other videos, but it’s crucial to be aware of unscrupulous investors who employ bait-and-switch tactics. They lure you in with attractive offers,only to change the terms or back out entirely, leaving you in a difficult situation.
When considering the investor route, prioritize working with a reputable company and thoroughly understand the contract terms. I’ve created additional videos detailing common contract red flags and what to watch out for. Check those out for valuable insights.
I hope this video has been helpful and empowers you to make the best decision for your real estate needs.
Let’s Connect
I hope our website, ProbateResource.com, and our YouTube channel are proving invaluable as you navigate the probate process. Our mission is to simplify this often complex journey. If you have a property you need to sell, we offer two options:
- The “Easy Button” – A quick, hassle-free cash offer to take the property off your hands.
- Top Dollar – Connect with our nationwide network of expert probate and inheritance real estate agents for a traditional listing and maximum sale price.
Visit ProbateResource.com, complete the form (link below), and let us assist you in achieving your real estate goals.
Thanks for watching, and have a fantastic day!