How To Get $5,000 To $50,000 More For Your House Guaranteed

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How To Get $5,000 To $50,000 More For Your House Guaranteed

 

Thinking Of Selling Your House? Here are some things that you have never heard of that can get you an additional $5,000 to $50,000 more (even more than it is worth).

Transaction Maximization ™ is the difference between “Selling Your Home” and Maximizing the fullest Potential of the sale. The difference can be staggering. When you sell a home, your agent meets at least the minimum expectations of the homeowner (not bad you say). But in Transaction Maximization ™ we speak of meeting a potential that was previously unknown. Example, you have a friend that just listed there home for 700,000 and in 4 days they accepted an offer at 740,000. Three weeks later it was sold and they are extremely happy (and should be). They, nor their agent, family or friends ever broach the subject of what the true potential of the transaction was. After all, it sold for 40,000 more that it was listed for, thus everything must have been done in the best way possible, right? If you believe that, then you can stop reading now. For the rest of you who would like to learn the concepts of Transaction Maximization ™, this article will change forever the way that you think of selling your home and will almost certainly increase the amount you get in the sale of your home. Some of the items below will apply to you, some will not but if you are willing to invest 20 minutes to learn you will almost certainly gain at minimum $5,000 more on the sale of your home.

Ask yourself this; Who benefits if you get an extra $10,000 in the sale of your home? You probably answered both the agent (he gets more commission) and you. If you did, you were wrong. In most listings the seller is offering 2.5 to 3.0 percent commission to each of the agents. Thus if the listing agent were to work harder and longer and you were to get another offer (or counter offer) 10,000 higher than your last, you would get an additional $9,400 to $9,500 (Awesome) while your agent would get between $250 and $300 dollars more. You might say that this is the way it should be. I would say, I agree…but how can you know if your agent is using Transaction Maximization ™ techniques when it only delays his paycheck not increases his earnings? The answer of course is that you must make them a requirement of the listing. This seminar teaches you how to do just that.

You are reading the “Full Version” of this seminar which is for die-hard money conscious fanatics who want every penny they deserve. If you are a person who would rather have the short version, click here for the Short Version

 

Transaction Maximization ™

To understand this concept, we must first correct the misconception that “Making your house prettier, cleaner, with flowers in front will make your house sell for more”. What these things do is make more people want to look at your home (increase Traffic).

Additionally you must understand the concept Full Potential through Baby Steps. Here we talk about using Traffic as a way to generate mass offers. Most agents call before they place an offer. The process of Baby Steps is the process of getting each agent who calls to make an offer just a little higher than the last.

TRAFFIC: Traffic is the single most important variable in generating higher offers, AND raising those offers to their fullest potential through the subsequent offer/counter offer process. It is easiest to look at it this way. Because each of us is different, we all have different likes and dislikes. Thus the laws of average would suggest that if we had ten people view your house then perhaps

• 1 Hates it!
• 2 Do not like it.
• 4 Think it was an okay house.
• 2 Like it.
• 1 Loves it!

Obviously the person who would want to make the highest offer on the house is the one who “loves it”. IF this person (Who Loves It!) sees your house, they will be the person who will want to Maximizes your Transactions potential by offering you the most. Remember, even in a fast moving market where buyers are bidding higher than normal, the ones who “Loved It!” are the ones that will want to offer the most and will respond best to your counter offers. However there are a couple of issues that will stand in the way of success.

• Did enough people walk through the house so that at least one of them “loves it”?
• Financial Capability (How much can the buyer afford). Just because he loves it doesn’t mean he qualifies to offer the most for it. Remember that whether the buyer is paying cash or using a loan there is a Maximum Financial Capacity of every buyer.
• Value of the house. When using Transaction Maximization ™ techniques many tomes the offers/counter offer will come in above the estimated value of the home. In these cases we use the Baby Steps process to get the buyers with part or all cash to remove their Appraisal Contingency (say they will buy it for “x” dollars even if the appraisal says it is worth less (yes buyers do this all of the time).
• In the case where the first few buyers who “loved the house” did not have the Financial Capability to outbid the buyers who “liked the house”, did enough potential buyers walk through your house that at least two of the buyers not only loved it, but also had the Financial Capacity to outbid the ones who “like it”.

If the only buyers who “Loved The House!” do not have the Financial Capacity to outbid the buyers who “Liked it”, then the transactions potential can never be maximized. You need at least 2 potential buyers who both love your house and have the Financial Capacity to outbid the ones who “like it”. This is because they not only outbid the ones who “liked your house’ but they must compete against the other buyer who also “loves your house” and also has Financial Capacity to.

Understanding the above references to Traffic and Financial Capacity, you begin to understand that the key driver to Transaction Maximization is driving traffic through your home. With enough Traffic, you will get enough people who “love your home” to make offers and through the Baby Steps process reach your homes transaction potential.

This also explains why so many sellers (& agents) are focused on the easy answers; new paint, new flooring, flowers in the front, etc. This all make more people walk through the front door. But is it the first place you should start? In a slow moving market this may be needed but in a fast moving market the answer is most likely no. We talked earlier that there are many different types of people out there and the all have different wants and needs and many don’t care about these particular things. Most renovations cost more than they return through the sale of the property and thus lead to an overall lower return on investment (you ended up with less money). While you may find that renovations will be a part of maximizing the potential of your transaction, you would be wise to engage in these things only if they fix things that are keeping a segment of people away (reducing traffic) and only then in cases where you cannot generate enough traffic through the processes described in this seminar without first renovating. Spending $10,000 to get a $5,000 dollar higher offer does not make sense. You would only do this if you did not expect any offers at all. Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that with the highest sales price you win. The real goal is the highest Sellers Net (the amount that you walk away with after all costs).

ACCESS: Access to the property and information about the sale is the second most important variable in generating higher offers, and raising those offers to their highest potential through the subsequent offer/counter offer process. It is here where we see not only agents harming their clients, but clients harming themselves.

In a slow moving market it could take weeks or even months for a seller to get an offer. The buyers are enjoying looking at the properties. The sellers and the agents are eager to provide access and communicate. The buyers usually get an acceptance on the first or second property they make an offer on.

In a fast moving market the buyers and their agents are exhausted from writing offer after offer only to have the seller pick another buyer. The buyer’s agents are trying to communicate even more than usual with the listing agents to determine how many offers are on the property, what range the offers are in, etc. However, many times the mindset of the seller and their agent has changed. The seller and agent know that the house is going to sell and probably above listing price. A sense of arrogance can sometimes creep in and hinder the seller from reaching the full potential of the transaction. Oddly enough it happens extremely often and the sellers never seem to notice the lost potential. Here are some common issues (some the seller is aware of, others happen without them over knowing)

• Buyers cannot find your homes listing on the MLS: Did you know that most buyers use the internet now to find their new home? And still a majority of those use their agent’s sites. If you use an agent from a different county they belong to a different MLS and the buyers using their agent’s sites in your county will never see your listing? This easily fixed if addressed in the initial listing contract.
• Seller restricts access to the house: Many times this is by not allowing a lock box to be installed. This forces showing only when the seller is home (uncomfortable for the buyer) or when the listing agent can coordinate and meet the buyer’s agent and the buyer at the home. Other issues are by restricting viewing to certain times. Or by requiring a 2 hour notice, etc. What if the person who was going to make the highest offer could not view your home at that time? Bottom line is that by restricting access to your home you will get less traffic. Less traffic will surely cause your home to sale for less. If you knew in advance that restricting access was going to end up costing you 20,000 dollars you would never do it. In real estate you can never know how much you lost; you can only set in motion expectations to maximize the potential of the transaction.
• Listing agent not encouraging communication: In a large percentage of listings, the listing agent places notes in the agents confidential section of the MLS that say “Do Not Call or Email, if the house is listed it is for sale”. This happens all the time and the sellers never know. This comes from a sense of arrogance on the listing agents side where they know that the house is going to get a lot of offers (probably over list price) and they know they are going to meet your minimum expectations. The issue here is not if your house is going to sell, it is whether or not you reached the fullest potential of the sale. Why would you not want the extra 5,000 or 10,000 that could have come from that buyer whose agent just wanted to understand if it made sense for them to even go out and look at the house? Remember in a fast moving market the buyers and their agents are exhausted from viewing houses and writing offers on transactions that did not happen. Traffic, Traffic, Traffic! Your agent needs to be answering calls, returning messages and emails and be communicating all pertinent info that would encourage a potential buyer to make an offer or counter offer greater than the one you currently have (Baby Steps).
• Insisting on a Highest & Best Offer: While you can always ask the buyers for their highest and best, how could it possibly benefit you the seller by not taking the time to counter offer every single buyer. Who cares if you have offers that are above the list price, why leave any potential money on the table. Take the most solid offer you have (the one that you are going to accept), and then counter the other offers to see if you can reasonably get more. NEVER say no or refuse to answer. ALWAYS counter. The only one that benefits by not counter offering is the agent who doesn’t have to take the time to write the counter offer (or at least call and verbally counter). In a fast moving market agents are busy, but should never be too busy to do what you have hired them to do. The question always comes back to this. Did you hire the agent to sell your home, or set the expectation that they would maximize your transactions potential?
• Disclosing the amount of your highest offer: This is actually one of the most misunderstood aspects of real estate. Should your agent disclose the amount of your highest offer? Most of you probably said no, but in many situations you would be incorrect. Think about it, in a fast moving market you have many offers that are above the list price and exceeding your expectations. What are the chances (odds) that someone is going to come in 50,000 above even that? Here is a good example: Let’s say you are listed at 700,000 and have 23 offers ranging between 690,00 and 740,000. Thus we see that the average person is saying that they see a value of 715,000 (it is simple math), and the most optimistic person said 740,000. An agent with a well-qualified buyer calls your listing agent and asks how many offers you have and what level the offers are at. What are the chances that this agent who is calling your agent is going to write an offer at 775,000? The odds have already shown us that unless your agent gives them direction they are going to write an offer at 715,000 (this is what the average person thought the property was worth). Real estate is a game of negotiations and BABY STEPS. If your agent tells him (like so many do), “I can’t tell you that it would not be fair to the other buyers”, then the odds are that the agent is going to talk to his client and they are going to make an offer at 715,000. Here is the problem with that, now that the buyer has assigned a value of 715,000 in his mind, it is a lot harder to get him to come up to 745,000 (5,000 higher than your current high offer in this example of 740,000). Far better would it have been for the listing agent to say “Well, I won’t tell you exactly but I will tell you we have offers in the low 740’s”. Now the buyer will be thinking that other people have already assigned a value of around 740,000 and he will try to beat it if he can. Or if he can’t, you didn’t want his offer anyway. In this example we will say you now get an offer at 745,000 from that buyer. Now the next time your agent receives a call asking what area the offers are coming in at he can build upon the last offer and say “well I won’t tell you how much my highest offer is but I can tell you it is n the HIGH 740’s”. It is through Baby Steps that you Maximize your Transaction Potential. The California Associations of Realtors form DA discloses to buyers and sellers that “Buyer is advised that the seller or listing agent may disclose the existence, terms, or conditions of the buyers offer unless all parties and their agents have signed a written confidentiality agreement. Whether any such information is actually disclosed depends on many factors such as current market conditions, the prevailing practices of the real estate community, the listing agents marketing strategy and the instructions of the seller”. Still most of the listing agents say the same thing “It wouldn’t be fair to the other buyers if I told you that”. This makes no sense. The listing agent is supposed to look out for you the seller not the buyer. It is the buyer’s agent who is supposed to look out for the buyer. When you begin to understand that you maximize your transaction $3,000 – $5,000 at a time, you understand that to do so your agent plays a crucial role in communicating and encouraging buyers and their agents to take the next step. While as an agent I never lie or am dishonest to my attempt to maximize the transaction, I must always be diligent in representing my principle (in this case it is the seller).
• Lack of Focus: When your expectations were exceeded, you never stopped to ask yourself, “Is this the best I can do”, have I maximized the potential. If you would have listened carefully the listing agent may have been telling you why you should accept an offer now (3 days after you listed the house), or perhaps a lower offer. Here agents are sometimes at odds with the best interests of the clients. Just because you have 13 offers, 3 days after listing and one of those offers is 40,000 above list price does not mean it is in your best interest to accept one so fast or even so low. The sooner escrow is started, the sooner the agent gets paid, but moving so fast that at least half of the potential buyers never got a chance to view your home actually reduced your homes traffic by 50%. There should be no doubt in your mind that not only did you not maximize your transactions potential, you probably lost a significant amount of money. Take a deep breath and slow down. Is it possible that the person who was going to make the highest offer could not make it to your house in the 1^st 2 days? Would leaving the house on the market for 3 to 5 days longer have caused you harm?
  

  If the whole goal of selling your home is to maximize your transactions potential by getting lots of buyers to bid against each other and drive the price up, why would you want to place obstacles for them just to make an offer?

• Demanding the buyer pre-qualify through the sellers lender in order to submit an offer: Your agent demands the buyer get a loan pre-approval from a lender that your agent knows prior to the buyer’s offer being reviewed or considered. This practice has become so widely used that probably 70% of the homes currently listed have this as a requirement (It is listed in the confidential remarks section of the MLS where only the agents can see it). The agents mentions to the seller during the listing presentation that in order to keep from receiving a bunch of offers from unqualified buyers, he works with a lender who will review the financial worthiness of all buyers who make an offer on the property prior to the seller ever looking at them. This they say will save the seller from looking at offers which are not qualified. This is process was started by the large real estate companies who also have ownership in certain loan companies but has become widespread throughout the industry. In my opinion it is a scam. How could this ever be in the seller’s best interests? Let’s start with the obvious. On day one when your house is listed, who are the only buyers that will make an offer on your home that are also pre-approved with this lender that your agent has chosen? You guessed it, the most likely source of the buyers will be the sellers agents own pool of buyers, and of course any agent who happens to work with the same company. For the buyers who had been prequalified through that lender, they just submit an offer. For the other 99% of the buyers who are out there, they have to decide whether it is worth submitting full financial documentation to get a pre-approval just for the privilege of making an offer on your home. Talk about causing you harm and drastically reducing traffic! In a fast moving market many sellers are errantly encouraged to accept offers in 2 or 3 days after listing. How could all of the people who wanted to make an offer on your house have their loan applications COMPETENTLY reviewed this fast by a loan officer who is doing the same thing for not only your agent, but 50 other agents? This process is inherently designed to put the listing agent and his company in the lead to get not only the commission for the listing, but also a commission for the buyer’s side and many times (if the listing agents company also has ownership in a loan company) a commission for the loan side to. Additionally it has the added benefit of reducing the amount of work that the listing agent needs to do (they can sort through fewer offers). But this is all done under the guise of “Saving the seller the time it takes to review offers that might never been financially feasible”. It never happens in a slow market when sellers are desperate for offers (and their agents desperate for commissions), so why would it be a good practice in a fast market? Think about it; is it really a bad thing to get too many offers? Just because you are making more money than you expected does it mean that that you don’t want any more? And if we get right down to it, you hired an agent to review all of those offers and help you understand which is likely to be the best. Traffic is the most important aspect you have to Maximize your Transaction, yet so many sellers are tricked into thinking that this scam helps them. Traffic…Always think “How will this affect my traffic”?
• Business vs Personal: Hundreds of millions are spent each year by the real estate industry to convince you that real estate is about friendships and relationships. It is not. It is a business. Specifically, when you are selling your home, it is your business. You must start running the sale of your home like a business. Many people have a low opinion of real estate agents; they feel that they are for the most part all the same. This is bolstered by the fact that an agent who has been in business for 2 months seems to have the same capabilities of an agent who has been in the business for 20 years. This is because even though the requirements to become an agent are the hardest they have ever been, it still only takes reading a few books and taking a test to get a real estate license! The agent needs to refresh their knowledge every four years with 45 hours of courses (that only take about 12 hours to actually complete). Thus it is fair to say that simply having a real estate license will not indicate the level of ability of the agent. Neither will the number of years they have been an agent, or the number of signs they have hanging in yards around town. You have never been concerned with this before because all those millions of dollars that the industry has spent have taught you that the relationship that you build with someone is more important than their level of expertise and there is no way for you to tell what their level of expertise is. You are expected to use someone that you know, and to do otherwise is shunned. You are expected to say “Thank You” to the agent when your house sells and never ask if more could have been done, if a higher price could have been obtained. Think about this. If you were involved in an accident and were facing 20 years in prison, would you choose your attorney because he was your friend? Would you choose the one that had his face plastered on the most bus benches? Or would you find an extremely knowledgeable attorney who had the best chances to maximize your defense position and prove your innocence? Here is why we do not use the same good judgment when choosing an agent. At the top of this article I mentioned that there was a huge difference between choosing an agent to sell your property and one who could Maximize the Potential of your transaction. I told you that when you sell a home, your agent meets at least the minimum expectations of the homeowner. But in Transaction Maximization ™ we speak of meeting a potential that was previously unknown. It is this unknown potential that causes the clients to choose friendship/relationship over the extra effort needed to find an agent who will maximize the potential of their transaction. It is hard for people to risk that friendship/relationship for an “Unknown Potential”. But don’t be confused, following the tips in this article will more times than not allow you to increase your traffic significantly enough to allow for a higher net return. Unknown does not mean non-existent; it means that how much you can get for your house has yet to be realized. Your number one concern should always be the best interests of you and your family. Ignore the advertising and Maximize your families transaction.


Two houses similar in size sitting side by side on the same street. Which one would you go look at? Buyers are faced with this question every day and they always choose the cheaper – nicer house. They think that if they don’t get this one that they will end up paying more for the other “not so nice house” so they make offers on the cheaper one then fight over it and bid it up. Buyers naturally assign a value of more than 725,000 to the house on the left because it is nicer than the one on the right. Most of them never looked at the one on the right and the one on the left will end up selling for far more than the one on the right ever could have. To get the most for your house…Think like a buyer!

• Listing your house too high: Most clients want to list their houses high (they want to get as much as they can, thus they ask for a lot). A good agent can tell you what your house is worth (it could sell for more or less than its value). The issue is that when the agent goes to the listing presentation it is like a job interview where the agent who says that they can sell the house for most gets the job. Thus all of the agents find the highest possible comps and try to impress the seller with what they can do for them. We have these fancy programs that give you all of this great data, plus information about the neighborhood, schools, infrastructure, etc. We look like we are incredibly plugged in, but it was just a program that made us look good. Sellers who are now looking at things like a seller and forgetting what it looked like when they were a buyer choose the agent that dazzles them with the highest possible listing price. It does not hurt the agent at all to list the house high. After all, their sign is dangling in another yard making them look as if they are a super-agent (they have signs everywhere). And anyway, sooner or later the seller will reduce the price low enough that the house will sell and the agent will get their commission. Without going into too much detail here let me ask you this. When you were a buyer and saw seven houses for sale that were very similar, but you only had time to see three of them, which would you choose. The houses were listed at 700,000, 715,000, 720,000, 725,000, 727,000, 745,000 and 760,000. Again they were pretty similar but certainly the nicest one was the one listed for 727,000, which three would you choose to look at. The answer is obviously the lowest two and the fourth one which while it was listed a little higher it was actually nicer than even the most expensive one. Traffic! You must have traffic in order to get enough people to walk through the doors to allow you to baby step them up to the Maximum Potential of your transaction. By appropriately pricing your house lower you will get all of the people who are looking in that area. This will include those who didn’t want to spend that 760,000- 790-000, but were hoping to get a great deal on your home. Once they have made an offer on your lower priced “Good Deal Home”, they have an emotional investment in your home. They have already envisioned themselves living there. Now we can attempt to bring them up, Baby Step by Baby Step to offer you more than the higher listed house will ever get. You must structure everything about your transaction to drive traffic, then use Baby Steps to increase your sales price.


Sometimes it is better to give up a little than give up a lot. The problem with determining commissions is that you are dealing with another unknown. You can reduce the commissions you offer to the agents and save a few bucks. But if doing so causes an agent or two not to show or recommend your home to a buyer/s then you may have lost far more than you will have saved. It is this unknown that you will have to consider when determining commissions.

• Agent and Commissions: Obviously for you to Maximize your Transaction you must drive traffic. You and your agent must work together to apply all of the Transaction Maximizing concepts talked about both above and the few left to be discussed below. But what about Agent Commissions? This is another misunderstood concept and one that agents are afraid to talk about. First the rules. The law says that there is not set commission that must be offered on a listing to either the listing agent or the buyer’s agent. It is negotiated between the seller and the listing agent, and then the listing agent may (or may not) offer part of that to any agent that brings a buyer to buy the home. Did you know that the buyer’s agent is not required to accept the amount that you offered? I’ll bet when you read that the hairs on the back of your neck stood up and you thought “Well forget them; I can sell my house to a different person and still get a good price on it. After all I have 16 offers!” Hopefully you are now smiling about the silliness of the statement and how easily you fell back into the thought process of Selling Your Home vs. Maximizing your Transaction. The question here is not “what you could do”, it is “what you should do” to get the most for your house. If you were applying for a new job with two different companies that were substantially the same but one was offering you a higher wage, which would you take? When a buyer is talking to his agent about buying one of several properties that are substantially the same but one is offering the agent a less pay, which do you think he is going to recommend. And this assumes that the agent is honest. Like all industries we to have people who are honest and some who are dishonest. With that in mind it is not hard to imagine that some agents might recommend lesser property over a nicer one simply because they would get a bigger pay check. Should you worry about this? No, it is nothing that you or I can control or even prove. We just know that it happens and should try to position ourselves in a place where all buyers and agents want to look at your property. Traffic… It is the key. You should also know that there is a disturbing trend happening in the real estate market the last 12 to 18 months. It happens a lot on short sales and is creeping into traditional (equity) sales. It is where the listing agent takes a listing for “x” commission (for example 6%) and (1) either leaves the contract blank on the amount that they will pay the buyer’s agent, or (2) in the case of Short Sales the agent tells the seller, this is a really hard transaction. I am going to have to do much more work to than the buyer’s agent so I want to keep 4% for myself and give the buyer’s agent 2%. Well let’s start with the obvious question. If the percentage of the commission split is going to be weighted based on who does more work, then in all of the normal transactions why do we not give the buyer’s agent the higher amount of the split (they do more work). The answer of course is that the agents have simply found a way to try to make more money. This can sometime happen without the client even knowing if as mentioned above the listing agent left the contract blank as to how much commission is going to be given to the buyer’s broker. In these cases the seller without knowing has left it up to the listing agent to offer any amount of commissions to the buyer’s agent he wants. This problem has become so big that I have seen listing where the listing agent has offered 1 dollar to the buyer’s agent. This meets the requirement of compensation offered, but obviously the seller was impacted as the number of buyers looking at their home, Traffic will have been greatly reduced. Let me try to put it in one more way for you. If you were selling a 700,000 home the difference between a 6.00 commission and a 5.00% commission is $7,000. You could gamble that you would get your highest offer even with the loss of any offers from agent that didn’t promote your property, but how much would you have lost if one of those buyers was the one that could have been Baby Stepped to the highest offer. And how much more would you have lost if several of those buyers could have been Baby Stepped up against each other to as you Maximized your Transaction Potential. How much commission you offer is up to you and the real estate agents will not argue with you over it (they don’t want to lose the listing), but you should carefully weigh the impact on traffic and make the decision that is correct for your family. You should always insure that the buyer’s agent in all cases is being offered enough compensation to push your property to the buyer and in all cases don’t let the Listing Agent keep more than they are giving to the buyer’s agent.

 

MARKETING: Did you know that the listing agents of approximately 40% of the homes listed under about 750,000 are purposely not advertising to your number one potential client? Worse yet the advertising is free so there is no reason for it.

In the old days agents used to advertise in the paper to increase traffic. But today 90% of the buyers (that is a real statistic) use the internet to find a home so the paper has become obsolete and is used only by agents to promote their own names not the houses they are advertising.

Before I give you the answers that you are salivating for, it is important to understand two more concepts. Who is buying, and what are they looking for?

• Who is buying
  • Buyers: 30% of the market.
  • First Time Buyers: 40% of the market.
  • Investors: 30% of the market
  • What are they looking for
    • Buyers: These more established buyers are generally speaking pickier. More often than not they will demand a home in nicer condition. (You might need to do some of those renovations even if you end up not getting all of your money back)
    • First Time Buyers: Are willing to pay just as much as regular buyers but will many times accept houses with maintenance items that they can perform themselves. (You probably will not need to do any of those renovations)
    • Investors: They will buy your home at a discount, and then perform the work needed to make it attractive to buyers.

You should consider the above numbers carefully. They tell a story that is far more important than is readily understood. The implications of the story should cause you to look inside and see how you can sometimes be your own biggest adversary in Maximizing your Transaction Potential. At the time that I am writing this article, it is a very fast moving market and untold numbers of sellers are failing to capture their homes full potential in the sale.

By looking at the numbers above we see that 40% of the homes listed are within the purchasing power of the First Time Home Buyer (about 750,000). Of the 30% of “regular buyer’s”, most (about 80% are also buying homes 750,000 or below. This means that if you have a home that will sell for let’s say 750,000 (buyers are optimistic) or less, then 2 out of every 3 (66%) people who have the potential to walk through your front door are First Time Home Buyers! This is HUGE. For those of you who are selling homes of more than 750,000 then please continue reading to as we will provide you with more info a little further down. For those of you who are selling homes 750,000 or less, here is a GREAT way to Maximize your Transaction.

First Time Home Buyers (FTHBs): First Time Home Buyer Programs (FTHB Programs) can help sellers sell their houses for much more than they would have sold for had the seller not enticed these buyers. FTHBs sometimes require a little more work on the agent’s side, and FTHBs who are getting FTHB Programs require a lot more work (and sometimes a longer transaction). Sellers sometimes feel that by advertising to FTHBs that they lose some prestige. If there was a chance you would get $5,000 to $50,000 more for your house would that make you feel better :-). Most listing agents don’t want to advertise to FTHBs because they will have to work harder to get the same pay. Additionally, if a FTHB is getting a FTHB program then the listing agents will many times counsel the seller to actually accept a lower offer than the higher offer using one. This is because the programs are very complex and the agents generally don’t have the experience and expertise to determine the likelihood that they buyer will be able to complete the escrow. The agent might say to the seller, “we have plenty offers above asking price, we should focus on those instead of this one which is more likely to fail”. But what they really are saying is that because they do not have the expertise to mitigate the risk you should accept another offer that reduces your net profit on the house. However, sellers will find that advertising to the FTHBs can lead to a HUGE increase in Traffic and thus significantly higher sale prices through the process of Offer/Counter Offer (Baby Steps). Even if the final person you sell your home to is not a FTHB or a FTHB using programs, you can use this huge market segment to drive Traffic and Maximize your Transaction through the offer/counter offer process. This is to say, if you had a buyer using a FTHB program who had made an offer at 750,000, you could use that buyer to baby step the next buyer to 760,000. And let’s say that the next highest offer you ever got was only 735,000, wouldn’t it be worth taking a chance on the 750,000 offer with the FTHB program (15,000 more!). After all if you are using an agent who understands the programs, your risk of failure is reduced and even if the transaction failed, we are in an ascending market and the price of your home went up! By now you have probably began to realize that Traffic and Baby Step offer/counter offer are truly the key. Why not entice all of those First Time Home Buyers to stop buy and make an offer on your home?

 

We Have The Tools To Help You Over Come These Issues And Sell Your House For More

• We have created an addendum to the listing agreement which obligates us to enter Data, Comments, Confidential Comments, Showing Instructions, Upload Documents and for us to act in the manner as described above. We will provide you with a copy of the agents version of the MLS page so you can see exactly what is written each time we make a change.
• You may cancel our listing agreement at any time (even before the contract expiration date) with the only limit being “Procuring Cause”. This simply means that if a buyer purchases your house due to our efforts, or when that buyer was procured during the time we had the listing or as a result of our listing then we still represent you and get paid. It means that if we caused your house to sell either directly or indirectly we get paid, this is fair. Other than that, cancel whenever you want with no obligation.
• We will allow you to use Transaction Magic, our proprietary Transaction and Document Management System http://www.TransactionMagic.com at no charge. This will allow you to receive offers either electronically and in real time, or the old fashioned way (paper). It will also allow you to track the transactions progress and documents in real time from the opening of escrow to the close of escrow.
• We will not show up with the same Fancy Smancy CMA (Comparative Market Analysis) as all of the other agents. We will log into Sandicor (the real MLS that agents use) right there at your house with you in control and allow you to review your homes comps and establish a value of your home. This way you are not just choosing an agent because they said they could sell your house for 17 billion dollars. We will help you understand how to interpret the data and apply what you learned in the article above. Please note that you must have a High Speed Internet connection and a personal computer (not a tablet or smart phone) which can use internet explorer (required by Sandicor).
• Additionally, if your house will likely sale for LESS than 750,000 to 800,000 we will do everything above plus if you would like,
  • We will put additional notes in the MLS that your house would be perfect for First Time Home Buyers. And that the house may be in an area that provides First Time Home Buyer Programs.
  • Additionally we will prominently display a rider sign (above or below the main For Sale sign) that says something like this “As part of our Listing Agreement on this house, Gardnier Inc has agreed to waive the First Time Home Buyer Consultation Fee for any buyer who wishes to purchase this home. We know that by helping you, we help our clients sell their home faster”. This has proven to increase traffic dramatically and regularly allows us to Baby Step the offers higher.
  • Our advertising will direct them to the number one website in San Diego and Riverside Counties for these programs http://www.FirstTimeHomeBuyerProgramsSanDiego.com Here they can get a huge amount of information and videos on how to use the programs to allow them to make a competitive offer on your home.
  • They will have Free access to our proprietary down payment assistance calculator (the only calculator on the internet that calculates the benefits of the Down Payment Assistance Programs). http://ownsdre.com/calculator/calculate.php
  • Last but not least, We and the lenders we know have the expertise to help you determine the likelihood of an offer that has been received by one of these buyers will succeed.

 

We are so confident that you will agree that Transaction Maximization and that our approach to Real Estate will significantly increase your net profit that we offer this guarantee.

If at the close of escrow on the sale of your home where we were the listing agent, you believe that the Transaction Maximization Services we provided did not lead to an increase in your sales price or net return

• Upon your written request we will credit you back in escrow 5% of the commissions actually paid to the listing broker.
• Example. 800,000 listing with a 6% total commissions in which we get 3 percent and the buyer’s agent gets 3 percent. 800,000 x 3% = 24,000 commission due to us (the listing agent). 24,000 x 5% (back to seller for our failure to Maximize Transaction) = $1,200 that would be credited back to seller from the $24,000 commissions paid to us.
• The only other criteria/exclusion is that in no case will the listing agents’ commissions ever be reduced below 2,000.00, This allows us to cover the costs of the transaction (Brokerage fees, E&O insurance, etc)

If after our listing appointment (90 to 120 minutes) you don’t agree that our methods of Transaction Maximizing ™ will likely increase your net profit in the sale of your home by at least 5,000 we will

• Give you a $5.00 gift certificate to Starbucks as a way of thanking you for allowing us to present our real estate services and Transaction Maximization Program.
• Leave you with a copy of our addendum to the listing contract which you can use as a guide for what might be important to you with whatever agent you might choose.

 
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We look forward to hearing from you. You may contact us at

Don Gardnier
877-696-7373 x777
or
Don@sd4u.com