A Real Life Example

It really is amazing to see what effect more than one buyer can have.

Late summer last year, I had a condo listed that was overpriced by about 5K (something that I have vowed to do no longer). The owners had bought it in 2005 and had paid too much for it. They never used the condo (impulse buy?) and it was draining them month by month. They did not care to rent it and have a tenant ruin it. Feeling bad about their plight I took the listing. We had very little activity but I did pick up some good buyers at 2 open houses there.

As a last ditch effort, I recommended that they try a lease purchase to at least stop the negative cash flow. They refused to take a loss on the condo so I added the lease purchase option to the MLS listing. That following weekend, I had two interested parties for the lease purchase. They knew about the existence of each other but that was all. The first party agreed to all my sellers' terms and offered their full price. The second party offered full price as well and offered to pay $200 month extra toward the buyers' escrow account. The sellers decided to have me ask the first buyer to put down an additional 3K toward the escrow account and up his monthly escrow deposit by $200, pay all utilities and an additional $100 per month in rent. He agreed and became their lease/purchase tenant.

Little did I think that my sellers would be able to secure the rent they wanted for the condo, never mind a full price offer. This all happened prior to my conversion to "energy" pricing as the solution to selling in a depreciating market, but it is a great example of what will happen when people perceive that they cannot have what they want.