The Contingent Offer

The Contingent Offer 

So you love the house you currently live in and are only looking to sell your AWESOME house if you can find another AWESOME house in a specific neighborhood.   Well, the Alexander Home Team – Keller Williams recently helped a family in this exact situation.  

Since my wife says I like telling stories, let me write this as just that, A Story:  

We will call this story : The Contingency Offer

One night about a year ago some friends of ours (Kinta AKA #TheFitMortgageChick and Steve AKA #ScubaSteve) invited us over to their house for dinner and drinks.  Of course as a Realtor I start to inspect their house as if they were going to hire me to sell it soon.  After a few drinks I told Kinta “I could sell this house” and Scuba Steve responded, ‘it would have to be for A LOT!’  So the conversation started with, well what do you consider A LOT?  

Fast forward  about a year and Kinta and Steve had been over to our house a few times and our neighborhood pool and mentioned “Brad if and we mean if we ever sell our house we would like to be in this subdivision”  and of course my response was “So you’re saying there is a chance?” .  

Fast forward a few more months and I have shown Kinta a few houses in the neighborhood and I came to realize she is “Picky” and had a few non-negotiable items that we had to over come.   The commode in the master bath absolutely had to have a door!!!

Then the day before we were leaving for our vacation, a “COMING SOON” sign pops up about 5 houses down from our house.  Why they didn’t hire The Alexander Home Team is for another BLOG / Story.   So I call Kinta and we can’t find time to see it before we leave town for a week.  (Keep in mind houses in this subdivision don’t stay on the market for longer than a week)  

We get back from vacation and had been back about a week or so and I saw on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) that the house was still available.  So I sent a text to Kinta and Steve “Hey that house is still on the market do ya’ll want to go see it?  ”Kinta said “Sure” , Steve said “the kitchen was too narrow”.   So I showed the house to Kinta.  We realized the kitchen was not too narrow, it was just a bad angle and the house had some potential .  Eventually #TheFitMortgageChick convinced #ScubaSteve to go take a look at the house.   As their realtor and friend we advised them that we thought the house was a very sound investment.  Personally, I thought it was underpriced in a subdivision that houses are usually overpriced.   

After a few days of thinking it over (remember they already have a AWESOME house and they currently remodeled the kitchen ) they decide to submit and offer.   

THE RESPONSE

The RESPONSE from the listing agent was “We won’t negotiate until you have your house ‘UNDER CONTRACT’. Yes you heard that right, they wouldn’t even negotiate with us until we got the AWESOME house UNDER CONTRACT!  

Soon after, we scheduled an appointment with our PHENOMINAL photographer, Kinta painted a few rooms and about 5 days later we had the house on the market.  

We put the house on the market Friday, and by Sunday we had 3 offers on the house.  

Now we had to go back to the other agent of the NEW AWESOME house and tell him we have 3 acceptable offers on their house but they don’t want to sign to sell their house unless we can come to terms on the NEW AWESOME house.   At this time, MASTER NEGOTIATOR  Stephanie Alexander went to work.   

THE NEGOTIATION 

This might be the best part of the story:  

Stephanie negotiated that the buyers of the OLD AWESOME house needed to close in 20 Days, but lease the house back to Steve and Kinta for FREE for an entire month.   This month allowed Steve and Kinta the time to close on the NEW AWESOME house and have time to do put new floors in and plenty of time to move with as little stress as possible.   

I hope you now have a better understanding of what a contingency offer involves.   Contingency means that you need to SELL in order to BUY.  

This story is to help buyers understand that it is very important to hire a knowledgeable, experienced realtor so that  they can navigate through the process of buying and selling a house with as little STRESS as possible.   

If you have any questions about selling or buying a house contact The Alexander Home Team – Keller Williams at 512-361-1568