How Motivated Is Your Seller?

When purchase prices for homes escalate into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes a $10,000 difference in an offer price can seem like a small variation, but $10,000 is $10,000. As you go through the process of making mortgage payments, you will no doubt wish you could shave a few months off of your payment term, which is exactly what shaving $10,000 or more will net you.

One of the prime ways of doing so is to locate a seller that is truly motivated to sell a property, sometimes at a minor expense in return for a speedy, smooth transaction. Making low offers is something all realtors have probably done in the past, though it can sometimes seem like a slap in the face to send a below-list offer.

The prospect of saving $10,000 or more should take that embarrassment out of the equation and motivate you to explore all avenues for saving money. There are a few ways to spot motivated sellers that might be more apt to accept an offer below list price than they otherwise would.

Everyone Sells For A Reason
One of the best ways to investigate the motives of your seller is to simply ask. That might seem like a common sense approach, but people often go through entire real estate transactions without asking even the most simple questions about who they are purchasing a very expensive item from.

Your realtor or the seller's realtor may have that kind of information at hand and while they might have reason to guard it, more often than not they will make polite conversation about what a seller's plans are. At open houses especially, realtors may make the effort to chat with you, sometimes answering such questions, in hopes of getting you interested in the property. Let that eagerness work for you and get the information you need that might help you.

There are quite a few situations that might result in a motivated seller, but perhaps the most common are relocations, divorces and financial troubles. As you can imagine, if a seller is involved in any of these three situations, it is probable that speed is an issue and sometimes that speed is worth a bit of a discount on the list price of the real estate property.

Relocations especially can split a seller's attention between two locations, greatly motivating the seller to quickly get rid of an old property to focus on a new one. That split focus can be your gain with a big of a discounted offer that nonetheless represents a quick chance to be done with the real estate.

Each Property Has Its Own Traits
More than just investigating a seller, you can investigate a particular property as well to perhaps indicate a seller that is tired of a particular piece of real estate. For example, properties that are not kept up as well, rental properties especially, could indicate that a seller is tired of dealing with a property and is more motivated to sell quickly, even if at a small discount.

If you want to go the extra mile and go through county tax records, it is entirely possible to find properties where sellers have home addresses far away from the property in question. In those cases, sellers that live far away are usually selling property that they can no longer maintain from a distance and have grown tired caring for. These are perhaps the best candidate to accept an offer below list price as they are tired of the hassle of maintaining a long-distance piece of real estate.

No matter your tactic, there are sellers out there that want desperately to sell you a piece of real estate. Do your homework and investigate just why a seller is doing so and why a particular property is on the market. Those two bits of information could produce the difference between a list-price offer for a piece of real estate and an accepted offer below list price.

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