Nov. 14, 2007 - The Winning Hand
Don't you just love those situations where everybody wins? It's even better when you are the person who pulls it all together.
My last post was about playing the hand your dealt. Actually it was a teaser post that was leading up to this one. I just had to make sure that the deal I was brokering would work out. Work out it did and I am sooooooo proud. I mean, if you can't boast and brag in your own blog them why bother?
So here we are faced with an slowly declining market. Most of the REALTORS® I know, including myself, have a pretty good inventory of listings. That's because the buyers seem to be hiding out somewhere waiting for the market to bottom out. They listen to the regurgitated crap that the shallow thinkers are blathering about not buying on the downward slide because you will probably lose your life savings. Because of this the market times on our great inventory of listings is slowly building up making us look bad.
When one of my clients changed jobs and had to move out of town, I suggested that he put the possibility of leasing with an option to buy on his listing and also list the home as a rental under a separate MLS number. I pointed out that the average rents in the area were high enough to cover his carrying expenses on the house and he would even be able to pocket a few dollars a month. He agreed.
Because Internet marketing really does work, I got a call one day from someone who had seen the rental listing on a website. With two children, a boy and a girl, they needed more room and were looking to rent a detached single family home so they could get out their cramped little two bedroom apartment. We made an appointment.
As I was showing them the home it became pretty clear to me that the only reason they were renters was because their debt to income ratio was just a bit to tight. They would have no trouble making the mortgage sized monthly rent payment and if it was this time last year they probably could have gotten qualified for a loan irregardless. They had ample funds to buy out their lease at their current apartment complex, pay the security deposit and the first months rent, and still have some monies left that, according to their budget, they were saving for a future down payment. They even laid out the plan of action they had already implemented as far as paying down their debt was concerned. I mentioned that they looked like really good candidates for a lease with an option to purchase. They agreed.
The long and short of it is that they liked the place, liked me, and liked the idea of having a percentage of their rent paying down the purchase price of the house. The owner liked the fact that the proposal called for them to pay more per month than he was asking, they were willing to use their saved future down payment funds to secure the option to purchase, credited to the purchase price of the house of course, and the fact that they offered to pay the full list price of the house minus the agreed upon portion of the monthly rental, the security deposit and the monies used to secure the option.
And so, the consent to dual agency was signed, the lease was signed and the option to purchase agreement was signed. They will be moving in tomorrow. Everybody got what they wanted, including me. I now have another set of happy past clients because we all played the hand we were dealt.
As always, if you have found yourself receiving my blog postings via e-mail, it is because I have either blogged about you personally, blogged about something I know is of interest to you, or I consider you to be a person of deep thinking and intellect and I would love to have you occasionally commenting on my blog. If you would like to be removed from the list simply send me an e-mail saying so.
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