Realtors, do you have hard to sell listings?

Let’s face it, Realtors do work hard to get the best listings and to earn their commission.

As Realtors, you work hard to get the listing, you work hard to market the listing, you work hard to find a buyer, you work hard to negotiate a contract, and then you work hard to get that contract closed. All along the process, there are huge opportunities for the entire transaction to blow up and take you back to square one. This makes it ultra-important to do things right so you can sell that Kansas City home fast.

Getting The Listing

For the most part, the sellers that call you are going to have a nice average house, not quite the ugly houses we see when people who have a Kansas City house to sell fast.  But from time to time a seller might call you who actually like a border and will should you a super ugly house – ugly because it’s in bad repair, ugly because it is very dated, ugly because it’s very dirty – overall a house that needs a lot of love.

Some agents would turn up their noses at this listing.  Others would smell the commission.  A few others might try to buy the property.

For us here at kcmoHomeBuyer we often like to make a full cash offer on the property so the seller can get the home out of their hair. The fastest way to sell an ugly home in Kansas City.

In other cases, we have helped the seller find the right contractors to clean out the house, clean it up, paint it and get new flooring. No more ugly, so it is much easier to sell.

And in some cases, we have listed these properties, warts and all, and marketed them to our cash buyer list.

If you are faced with this listing and you need a quick cash buyer, send us an email to kcmoHomeBuyer@gmail.com and we can take a look and make an offer.

Marketing the Listing to Cash Buyers

In our sister company Realty Resource, we have listed quite a few fixer-upper properties like these and we can give you some words of advice on marketing.

1.  Find out what your seller is willing to do and not do.
2. Help them where you can by recommending contractors and coordinating.
3. Price the property to sell based on the current condition.
4. Take a ton of photos, even if it’s in a trashed state.  Don’t forget to get shots of the mechanicals like the furnace, the AC, the breaker box.  Get the good stuff, the bad stuff, and the ugly stuff.
5. Fill out as much detail as possible on MLS and share at least 25 photos maybe more if needed.  Investors and Handy Home Buyers can pretty much formulate an offer from good photos and why hide the rusty furnace when it’s going to come out in the inspection anyway.
6. Don’t discount the possibility of a home builder wanting to buy to tear down – especially in old Leawood, Mission, and Prairie Village.

While we are talking about marketing, if you are marketing a less than perfect house, don’t forget the social media groups dedicated to real estate investors or bringing a flyer to a real estate investor meeting.  Here in Kansas City, you can find most of the real estate investor and landlord meetings posted at www.MAREI.org.

Finding the Right Buyer who can Close

You will also want to make sure the buyer that makes the offer has actually viewed the home. We have tried again and again to take that investor buyer offer that just seems to high to be true and time and again, they lower their price upon inspection. Or they are not really a true buyer but rather someone getting the house under contract so they can then market it to their buyer’s list with no intentions of buying if they can’t find an end buyer.

As you market the house above, if you find you need to find a cash buyer, who closes on time, with minimal if any issues, then be sure to reach out to the Tuckers at kcmoHomeBuyer.

• We have been buying fixer-upper homes since 1999, so we know what we are doing.
• We have multiple private investors who fund our deals, so no waiting for appraisals and loan approvals.
• We know what we are looking at and other than foundation, structural and sometimes termites, we don’t have a lot of inspections.

Negotiate the Contract

If your buyers want full market value, then we are not the buyer for you.  But if your sellers want the home sold, they want it sold quickly, with no contingencies, well, in today’s market, go ahead and list it and you just might get a crazy stupid full price offer from another cash buyer.  But if that is not working and you just want to see what kind of ballpark offer we might make, email us the listing and we can take a look.

We can tell you if we would be interested and roughly what we might offer on the home.  Or we might refer one of our buyer friends to you for a small referral fee.  Or possibly give you some ideas for getting it sold.

Closing the Contract

Now there are cash buyer real estate investors who actually have the cash or access to the cash to move quickly.  Then there are other “cash investors” who are trying to tie your listing up with a contract and then get busy finding a person to buy their contract, with no intention on their part to actually close.  Then there are brand new investors that just went to a seminar or read a book who have no idea what they are doing.

So when you are dealing with the real estate investor buyer – there is a clause in the KCRAR contract, that pertains to earnest money that is being held by the seller or for new home construction.  We highly recommend you talk to an attorney at your brokerage firm to get the best wording for an earnest money clause that is similar.  Here’s a rough version to add to all your contracts, no matter who holds the earnest money.

Buyer and Seller Agree that after the ___ day inspection period that the earnest money becomes non-refundable.  If after inspections are completed the buyer does not close as agreed, buyer and seller agree that the escrow company will release the earnest money funds to the seller.

This clause or something like it has been in almost every real estate sale contract we as sellers have used when selling to unknown real estate investor buyers.  It eliminates the people who have no intention of buying and keeps your fixer-upper listing from being tied up longer than the inspection period.

Hopefully, this blog post gave you a few ideas about getting your fixer-upper property listings sold.  Right now in 2021, you should not have any problems getting them sold in the Kansas City Market if they are priced correctly.  If they are not selling, then, as you know revisit the price.

Remember, we buy houses here at kcmoHomeBuyer, and if you need to get something sold, reach out to us here at kcmoHomeBuyer.com by filling out the form below. We can discuss your options.