Let me first say that Jack did amazing. We had a great property but a rough house that was 70 years old to sale and there were some serious bumps in the road getting this deal closed.
We list our house and immediately get a ton of foot traffic on the first weekend along with several offers including a full price cash offer. Awesome, hoping to wrap this thing up quick, right?
No. They schedule 4-5 inspections over 5/7 days of the option period and start going to the city to see if we or the previous owners pulled permits on any and everything that was done. There was a little confusion because we had our neighbor who was a GC and home builder in the area tell do some work for us. He assured us we didn't need to pull permits on this stuff. He was wrong. But he died within the last year (I actually took care of him in the hospital when he died). So I'm just going to take the L. On day 6 of the option period, buyers state that they're not going to pay the full price, which is fine. I'm willing to negotiate. They say they'll pay $125k less than their original offer.
**** that. The buyers have flipped houses before and one of them is a real estate agent. They even go to the same church as us. There's no way they were ever going to honor their original full price offer. They knew the minute they walked that property they were going to low ball us. The house is on 1.6 acres in a desirable part of the metroplex and the land is worth about what their offer was without the house on it. They the. back out of the option period. I get that as a buyer, they had a great strategy. Part of me even admired it, but as a seller that was crappy on their part.
Great. Now we lost 6 days. Have to address these permit issues before we get back on. New disclosures to fill out. In the meantime we get a bunch of lowball offers. One even had a picture and a letter of the family that spoke about how much they love our place. So much so they were willing to offer 70% of our asking price. Their financial letter attached to the offer showed that they could have offered a near full price offer.
Starting to doubt our evaluation of the property because there were not many comps at all. I get an independent appraiser who appraised it within $4,000 of our list price.
That's good. So we go back on the market full of confidence. We did get the foundation checked because it did have some issues in the soection. We had disclosed that it had previous work from the previous owners so we called that guy. He only speaks Spanish. Our realtor, Jack, comes through in the clutch and speaks Spanish. Takes care of getting the foundation company out there and gets us a quote.
Well, it's 9k to fix the foundation, we now standardize offering 15k on closing to really make sure that whoever buys the house knows they're covered. We get a near full price offer. Awesome. We move forward. They find some more issues with the house and knock us down a little bit more. No problem. We are through the option period now.
Well, my dead neighbors son calls me up to ask if he can have the playhouse we have in the back. The thing about this playhouse is that it's big about 6x9 feet and about 12 feet tall and it was built by his dad. His dad died before he could make one for my friends kids (dead guys grandkids). He asks if he can have the playhouse. I of course tell him yes.
This proceeds to open up a major can of worms that Jack handles so very well. The playhouse isn't attached to the house but the couple buying it has young kids and the playhouse was something they were looking forward to having. I try to explain the situation to the buyers through Jack. They're not convinced. So I offer them our 13,500 watt generator that can hook up to the house via a transfer switch and power the whole house. I had already told my friend yes so felt like I had to make it right so this was all coming out of my pocket because I told the fiends he could have the house for free. After some deliberations back and forth, the buyers are satisfied. Ok. 3 weeks till closing. What could go wrong? In the meantime, we had researched the buyers and by all accounts they seem like fantastic people. They own a nail salon and the reviews of the place are not only glowing but nearly all of them talk about how genuinely good the owners are.
A couple of days later, I'm on nights so sleeping during the days. I wake up to see the group message between me, my wife and Jack have blown up, so I know something is wrong. I just assume the sellers found something else wrong with the house and are backing out. At least we'll get our earnest money back I think.
It's worse. Way worse. The buyers, remember really good guy with young kids, has died. He had no health problems. He was short of breath, went to the hospital and dropped dead. Completely unexpected.
I feel terrible. I'm so sad for this family that I didn't even know, but I'm still sitting here with a house so close to closing yet I have no idea what is going to happen. What do we do? Lots of questions. Once again, Jack is so completely helpful. We were out of the contract within 48 hours. And on to another offer.
As an aside, turns out, according to some of my lawyer friends, we could have kept the earnest money in this situation with the buyer dying. There are a lot of roads to hell that I may fall to but I was sure to stay away from "Not returning earnest money to a widow" way. We obviously declined to take the earnest money. I also ripped up the option money check.
The next offer we took was a little bit lower offer but considering everything that we had to disclose, we were happy with it. It was cash and they could close in 15 days. Not having 45+ day close was worth something, so we were ok with a little lower offer. 5 day option period. On Day 4, get a text from Jack "Can we talk?"
After Jack walked me back from the ledge, I listened to what he had to say. The buyers had found something else with the house that we didn't know about but we're willing to work with us. With Jack mediating, we got it figured out fairly before the option period expired. That was a week ago. We closed today.
All of the above was over the course of 5 weeks. The absolute most up and down and up and down and up again experience I have had selling a home. Jack was a rock through all of it.
TLDR.
Red Pear and Jack Fernandez was a great experience.
We list our house and immediately get a ton of foot traffic on the first weekend along with several offers including a full price cash offer. Awesome, hoping to wrap this thing up quick, right?
No. They schedule 4-5 inspections over 5/7 days of the option period and start going to the city to see if we or the previous owners pulled permits on any and everything that was done. There was a little confusion because we had our neighbor who was a GC and home builder in the area tell do some work for us. He assured us we didn't need to pull permits on this stuff. He was wrong. But he died within the last year (I actually took care of him in the hospital when he died). So I'm just going to take the L. On day 6 of the option period, buyers state that they're not going to pay the full price, which is fine. I'm willing to negotiate. They say they'll pay $125k less than their original offer.
**** that. The buyers have flipped houses before and one of them is a real estate agent. They even go to the same church as us. There's no way they were ever going to honor their original full price offer. They knew the minute they walked that property they were going to low ball us. The house is on 1.6 acres in a desirable part of the metroplex and the land is worth about what their offer was without the house on it. They the. back out of the option period. I get that as a buyer, they had a great strategy. Part of me even admired it, but as a seller that was crappy on their part.
Great. Now we lost 6 days. Have to address these permit issues before we get back on. New disclosures to fill out. In the meantime we get a bunch of lowball offers. One even had a picture and a letter of the family that spoke about how much they love our place. So much so they were willing to offer 70% of our asking price. Their financial letter attached to the offer showed that they could have offered a near full price offer.
Starting to doubt our evaluation of the property because there were not many comps at all. I get an independent appraiser who appraised it within $4,000 of our list price.
That's good. So we go back on the market full of confidence. We did get the foundation checked because it did have some issues in the soection. We had disclosed that it had previous work from the previous owners so we called that guy. He only speaks Spanish. Our realtor, Jack, comes through in the clutch and speaks Spanish. Takes care of getting the foundation company out there and gets us a quote.
Well, it's 9k to fix the foundation, we now standardize offering 15k on closing to really make sure that whoever buys the house knows they're covered. We get a near full price offer. Awesome. We move forward. They find some more issues with the house and knock us down a little bit more. No problem. We are through the option period now.
Well, my dead neighbors son calls me up to ask if he can have the playhouse we have in the back. The thing about this playhouse is that it's big about 6x9 feet and about 12 feet tall and it was built by his dad. His dad died before he could make one for my friends kids (dead guys grandkids). He asks if he can have the playhouse. I of course tell him yes.
This proceeds to open up a major can of worms that Jack handles so very well. The playhouse isn't attached to the house but the couple buying it has young kids and the playhouse was something they were looking forward to having. I try to explain the situation to the buyers through Jack. They're not convinced. So I offer them our 13,500 watt generator that can hook up to the house via a transfer switch and power the whole house. I had already told my friend yes so felt like I had to make it right so this was all coming out of my pocket because I told the fiends he could have the house for free. After some deliberations back and forth, the buyers are satisfied. Ok. 3 weeks till closing. What could go wrong? In the meantime, we had researched the buyers and by all accounts they seem like fantastic people. They own a nail salon and the reviews of the place are not only glowing but nearly all of them talk about how genuinely good the owners are.
A couple of days later, I'm on nights so sleeping during the days. I wake up to see the group message between me, my wife and Jack have blown up, so I know something is wrong. I just assume the sellers found something else wrong with the house and are backing out. At least we'll get our earnest money back I think.
It's worse. Way worse. The buyers, remember really good guy with young kids, has died. He had no health problems. He was short of breath, went to the hospital and dropped dead. Completely unexpected.
I feel terrible. I'm so sad for this family that I didn't even know, but I'm still sitting here with a house so close to closing yet I have no idea what is going to happen. What do we do? Lots of questions. Once again, Jack is so completely helpful. We were out of the contract within 48 hours. And on to another offer.
As an aside, turns out, according to some of my lawyer friends, we could have kept the earnest money in this situation with the buyer dying. There are a lot of roads to hell that I may fall to but I was sure to stay away from "Not returning earnest money to a widow" way. We obviously declined to take the earnest money. I also ripped up the option money check.
The next offer we took was a little bit lower offer but considering everything that we had to disclose, we were happy with it. It was cash and they could close in 15 days. Not having 45+ day close was worth something, so we were ok with a little lower offer. 5 day option period. On Day 4, get a text from Jack "Can we talk?"
After Jack walked me back from the ledge, I listened to what he had to say. The buyers had found something else with the house that we didn't know about but we're willing to work with us. With Jack mediating, we got it figured out fairly before the option period expired. That was a week ago. We closed today.
All of the above was over the course of 5 weeks. The absolute most up and down and up and down and up again experience I have had selling a home. Jack was a rock through all of it.
TLDR.
Red Pear and Jack Fernandez was a great experience.
