My experience with Covid-19 and Real Estate Tips-Multiple Offers and Listing w/Covid-19

First and foremost, I am well on the road to recovery from Covid-19. Yes, both Tom and I had it.  He first, then me.  While he was nearly as affected as I was, he is still feeling the after effects of the general  fatigue.  He is back at work and should be fine.  Many of you know that I was in hospital and am still recovering at home.  I tire quickly and still (probably for some time) have a cough.  However, neither of us are contagious anymore.  This is something to take seriously and please be careful with distancing and using your masks.

I will say that many of my clients have given me great support and I want to thank you for this!

Real Estate continues to be very lively in Phoenix. Many investors are against multiple offers.

I wanted to share my thoughts when you may be in a multiple offer situation.  As a Buyer’s Agent, I am seeing this quite often.  I REALLY hate to get into a multiple offer situation.  Here’s why, you are simply bidding against yourself.  You and I have no knowledge of what the other offer is and we are simply allowing the listing agent to raise the price or remove contingencies.  If this is what you want, I will certainly do my best.  My recommendation is often, withdraw the offer and go on to another property. Many times the listing agent suddenly becomes much easier to work with and we still get an accepted offer.  Did the listing really have another offer? Who knows? A few days ago, I wrote an offer for a client that had several offers.  The listing agent wanted my client to pay 20K over listing price and remove appraisal contingency. Also to remove the inspection contingency.  While I certainly spoke with my client to offer them the terms and conditions, my solid advice was to move on.  In another case last week, we wrote a really good offer on a property and the agent called the next day that they had accepted another offer.  She let it slip that the other offer was one of her own clients.  Did she use my offer to encourage an offer from her client? PRobably.  This is called “shopping the offer”. Hard to prove but highly unethical!

As a Seller, if you received more than one offer be careful.  I usually recommend that we work with the best offer.  If you use the multiple offer forms and it is done correctly, often you may lose ALL offers for the very reasons that I have outlined above.  If we vet the offers on the table, while there is never a guarantee in Real Estate, most often we go to a successful closing,

I also wanted to touch base on the differences that I am personally using with Covid-19 and listing a property.

While I alway use professional photos and supply the due diligence upfront thus circumventing many buyers that are not serious, I have added other tools to the tool chest. I now have virtual tours done to all listings.  I also am in the process of obtaining actual floor plans for each property. This way every potential buyer has a tour of the property and floor plans.  Of course, I have always kept up with current books and records along with the most current rent roll.  Some properties have 20 to 25 different pieces of due diligence provided on the more than 30 websites that I list on.  Remember that this takes me almost 6 hours to update every month.  I want to thank the property managers and the owners for helping gather all of this information.  Without this timely help, this task would be insurmountable.

I hope that this Blog helps draw back the curtain to the job that I work on every day and again I want to thank everyone for their continued support while I am still recovering from Covid-19.

Remember that I do answer my phone and feel free to call me.  602-688-9279.

Linda