 What If You Get An Offer?
You’ve decided to sell your home yourself and decide to have an open
house to show off the property. Potential buyers come and you get an
offer. What now?Qualifying Buyers
Your home is looking sharp and you’ve got the word out telling
people about the open house. Now you need to be prepared to take
action if a qualified buyer attends, likes your home and wants to
buy it.
Most qualified buyers will have a strong lender letter. If one of
them wants to buy, you can move on to the next step. There may be
people who come to your open house who would like to buy but don’t
yet have a lender letter. Let me suggest a mutually helpful alliance
for dealing with that situation.
Call several lenders before you schedule your open house. Tell them
you’re planning an open house and you’d like to have a lender on
hand to help buyers (even if they don’t want to buy your home)
figure out what they can afford. Tell them you’d also like them to
help you evaluate any lender letter you’re offered by a potential
buyer. Choose the lender you feel most comfortable with and work out
a mutually acceptable date for your open house.
You can introduce all attendees at your open house to the lender.
This often proves to be helpful to you, some of the buyers who
attend and can be a source of additional loans for the lender.
Everybody wins.
Be Prepared for Action
You need to know how you want to handle a contract should someone
want to make an offer. Do you have an attorney who will draw it? Are
you going to suggest using a contract form? If so, have one on hand.
Do you have a specific settlement company you’d like to use? Do your
homework and think these things through in advance. Buyers may have
ideas and connections of their own. You should consider any
reasonable suggestion a potential buyer makes, but be prepared with
your own approach if the buyer isn’t sure how to proceed. The point
is to plan your course of action in advance.
FSBO sellers often worry whether anyone will attend their open
houses. They are then happily surprised when people arrive. Such
happiness can turn to embarrassment when an offer is made and the
FSBO seller isn’t sure how to handle it. If you think positively and
prepare, this need not happen to you.
If
your house is currently listed with another broker this is not
intended as a solicitation of that listing.
|
REALTOR® -- A Registered collective membership mark
that identifies a real estate professional who is a member of the
National
Association of REALTORS ® and subscribes to its
strict Code of Ethics. Inquiries regarding the
Code of Ethics should be directed to the
board in which a REALTOR® holds membership.