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Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #10-04: Be prepared to negotiate in hours, not days with the Military

July 29, 2017


Bryan Vogt: Hey, welcome back everyone. You’re listening to Ready, Set, Sold, with Bryan Vogt. Hey, don’t forget to like us on Facebook. Ready, Set, Sold with Bryan Vogt and like us. Some great information on there, too. Also, we have podcasts now. By all means, if you’ve missed a show or you want to go back to a show, go to iTunes or go to Google Play and they’re all lined up. You can listen to whatever segments that you want. Just so you know that it’s available to you. I’m really excited about that.
My whole goal is to get this information out to as many people as possible, people looking to sell, so that you don’t have to go through some of the trials and tribulations that sellers do run into, that you have the information that can make an impact on selling your biggest investment, for most people, of their lives, and it can be an easy, simple process, with some work required. I’m not going to deny that, but getting some work up front will pay big dividends when you put your house on the market and get it sold for top dollar.
With that, I talked about dealing with the military, and again speed, speed, speed. So they find the house that they want, they’ll put an offer on it. Usually it’s top dollar, very seldom is it not, it really isn’t. Again, they’re motivated, they want to get it, they want to pay a fair price for your house, but they’re not going to overpay. It’s the speed of which you need to respond back. Again, if you have a military buyer, even if they’ve given you 24 hours, I don’t care how much time they’ve given you, I would strongly suggest, if you’re a seller, to respond back as soon as you can.
Here’s the reason why. We just had this happen not too long ago, and actually there was a couple stories on this that happened. Understand that when they’re looking at all these houses, they have their number one, but they normally have their number two, and it’s not out of the question that they have their number three. So, they do put that offer in, they do want a response back, and they may give you 24 hours. But there’s a second and a third one usually sitting out there, and this situation is, again, the sellers chose not to act. It was on a Saturday, they were leaving Sunday. Yes, they gave 24 hours, and I understand that, but they were getting nervous. They were getting edgy, and they wound up deciding to rescind the offer.
Now, this doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen. Rescinding an offer, as long as no action was taken and the sellers never agreed to terms, you can rescind an offer, the buyer or the seller can. It doesn’t happen very often, but you can do that if no action was taken. They rescinded the offer and they went after number two. Number two in this situation, they did limit the period of time, I think something like four hours.
Number two said, “Fantastic. Got a deal. Life is good.” Doesn’t happen everyday, but it can happen so if you’re dealing with the military, even if they’ve given you 24 hours, it’s usually best to act sooner, because they have a time line and they do have those second and third houses and it does happen that they will move on. That’s how it works. Again, it’s important that you as the seller know that and your agent is letting you know. That’s a situation that we see so many times. It doesn’t happen everyday, but it does happen.
The other part about that is are you flexible in your closing date? Understand, they’re coming in, and, yes, 20 to 30 days is a normal closing date, but many times they’re coming in but they’re not going to have to report to Scott Air Force Base for maybe 60 or 90 days. Do you have some flexibility of maybe pushing it back out to two months? Maybe even two and a half months. We had a situation where the military person gave top dollar.
Naturally the military have one of the best financing options there is, it’s a VA loan. It used to be years ago the VA loans were more difficult. Now, they’re probably one of the easiest loans to work with if you’re a seller. It’s so simple. So you have that military person. Can you work with them? Can you do two and a half months? We just had, like I said, a situation where the seller decided to say, “Yeah, we’d like to be out in 30 days, but we’ll work with you two and a half months.” Got a deal closed. Life was good.
Same scenario, though, we’ve had sellers say, “No. Not going to budge. 30 days I’ve got to be out. Whatever.” Bottom line is when it came down to it, remember, they usually have more than one choice, they said, “Thank you, but no thank you.” and they went to the second choice, and they got their closing date. Again, it’s an easy thing to know.
Now maybe you don’t have flexibility. If you don’t, you don’t, and that’s okay, but just remember, most times you usually have some play, and remember you’re dealing with a military buyer that has a fantastic loan. They have a fantastic rate of closing. They are motivated buyers that need to buy and want to buy and they want to buy your home, so even though you might not want that closing date, in most cases it’s best to try and match that closing date to what they have.
The other part about that when it comes down to timing wise, is availability. I’ll give you a quick example, just a quick story. Some buyers, they were in the $450,000 range, military buyers. Yes, there are military buyers that buy in that price range in the metro East, and what had happened was they saw some houses, but they happened to drive by a house that they didn’t really catch before. They saw it on the internet, but it attracted their attention. It wasn’t on the list of houses to see.
The agent called the selling agent and said, “Hey, can we get in? We’re literally sitting in the front door. Our car’s parked in front of the house.” The seller said, “Absolutely.” She was there, she had her kids there. Five minutes, she was out the door. The military buyers walked in, loved the home, went and looked a few more houses, back for a second showing. By that evening, they had put an offer, an accepted offer, and those sellers had sold their home.
I bring this up … It can be in any price point, but when you’re dealing with the military, again, time is not on your side as far as 24 hours or even two hours or even three hours, so you may have to be flexible on letting people in, especially if you know they’re the military. Be aware of that, be conscious of that. We’ve seen the other situation where the military person has said they wanted to look at a house, it wasn’t on their list, they understand it was short notice but they really had some interest in the home, and the seller said, “No. No, I’ve got to have this. I have to have this. I have to have that,” and it wasn’t like they came back the next day.
They already had their next day already filled up with what houses they wanted to see, and they moved on. You don’t want to be in that situation. Let them look at it. Look, it doesn’t have to be perfect. We have our bad days. That’s okay. Military buyer, for that matter any buyer, you want to get them in there. But either way, you want to make sure that you have that showing, especially with the military person.
With that said, hey, this and much, much more is in the book. Go to ReadySetSold.org, not .com. Get the book, it’s absolutely free! Next time we’re going to do not only a recap of what we talked about putting it all together, but guess what? We’re going to do the Tip of the Week. Stay tuned.

Talk to you soon.

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