“Hi Gary. Thanks for your help, but we’re going to use an agent who said she’d guarantee to sell our home or she’d buy it herself…”
***ANSWER:
Hold on! I’ll match her offer!
Why?
I mean, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to buy your home…at 10 to 20% under market value. Oh, she forgot to mention that?
That’s right. The basic approach with any “I’ll buy your home if I can’t sell it” is that it has to be WAY under market value for the agent or company to buy it.
There are also variations…
Some agents promise to pay a price that you’d both later “mutually agree” on. WOW, you could drive a Hummer through that loophole! If you don’t “mutually agree” on a price, then POOF, the guarantee disappears. And the only price they’d “mutually agree” to is 10-20% below market value.
Or maybe the price sounds reasonable, but on top of the real estate fee, they also charge a monster fee of 5% to 10% or more.
Or the only way they’ll give you any guarantee is if you list at a price so low that your home will sell in a minute. And if you don’t want to underprice your home, they have an answer: “Oh, you’d like to ask a higher price? No problem. But of course we don’t offer the guarantee. Please sign here.”
Bottom line is:
There’s no free lunch. Guaranteed home sale strategies are, at best, misleading. At worst, they’re total scams.
Watch out!
