“The vast majority of the time, both the sellers and the buyers have their own Realtor to represent them,” King says.
Some homeowners opt to complete the transaction without their own agent, Stuart says.
Checking other sources
Laura Fall, principal broker of Fall Properties in Falls Church, writes letters to homeowners on behalf of clients once or twice a year, especially when the market is tight, but she also suggests checking for-sale-by-owner Web sites.
“Another angle is to try to find out if sellers are posting their properties on listservs, knowing that there is a good chance they could sell their home without going fully on the market with a Realtor,” Fall says. “Last year, I had clients who were lined up to list their home with me, but they found a buyer by posting their home online.”
Another option that agents use is to reach out to other agents who frequently list homes in a particular neighborhood.
“I recently did a blast e-mail to about 300 agents on Capitol Hill to try and smoke out any upcoming inventory in their pipelines on behalf of buyer clients who sold their house and have nowhere to buy,” says Morgan Knull, an associate broker with Re/Max Gateway. “I got a couple of leads, but — here’s the kicker — mostly e-mails back from agents asking me if I had any upcoming inventory in various neighborhoods.”
In that case, the few leads generated by Knull’s e-mail were not a suitable match for the buyers, but sometimes networking among agents can generate a match.
“I recently sold a home through agent networking before the first open house,” Stuart says. “We were listing the house at $1,195,000 — it sold for $1,285,000. An agent brought in a buyer who wanted to ‘stop the clock’ on the listing. In order to do that, the buyer had to come in with a big offer without contingencies.”
Buyers who are frustrated by the lack of available properties and by heated competition with other buyers should discuss the option of actively seeking sellers with an agent.
“You really have to be specific about your price range and where you want to live,” Epstein says. “If you want to buy in a sought-after area, it makes an enormous difference to have a Realtor digging around for you and talking to owners before they list their property.”
King says buyers must have a strong pre-approval from a lender as well as a comfort zone with their prospective monthly payments before looking for property. She recommends that buyers have a financial information sheet to share with sellers that includes information about their loan approval, employment, income and assets and that they know what they want to buy and where. In addition, buyers must have funds available for an earnest-money deposit and down payment.
“If the buyers and their Realtor have a strong sense of the neighborhood values, it gives them a decisiveness to move fast,” says King.
Real estate agents always recommend a home inspection even if a buyer is negotiating with a homeowner whose house is not on the market.
“You need to have a full home inspection to check out the roof and the home’s systems to avoid a disastrous situation, but you should make it clear to the homeowners that you don’t intend to be aggressive and ask to have every little thing fixed,” Dunn says.
As Dunn adds, “Extraordinary times in the real estate market need extraordinary means in order for buyers to be successful.”
Michele Lerner is a freelance writer.
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