OnPoint Community Credit Union is running a fairly new TV commercial. Tracey runs buy her dream house everyday. One morning she runs by and there is a for sale sign in the yard. Tracy is a smart cookie. She doesn’t call the listing agent from the sign and gush about her dream house. She knows dual agency is evil. Instead she calls her OnPoint mortgage broker to get the ball rolling. We can’t tell if she has been pre-approved or if she is just starting out. It doesn’t matter in this scenario because Jack already has an accepted offer and tomorrow she’s going to be crushed when she runs by the ‘sale pending’ stickers on the sign.
Meet Jack. Tracy has never met Jack. Jack rolled into work yesterday at about 10 AM, just a couple hours after Tracy’s 8 AM morning run. When Tracey ran by it was just another house on the street. It wasn’t for sale. At 9 AM the sign post was delivered and the listing agent was entering the listing into RMLS. Jack was diligently working (actually he was checking FaceBook) when a new email popped up with the subject line: “Property Previews for Jack.” The new listing alert shows a picture of his dream home. He drives by every morning on the way to work and there was no sign when he went in this morning. His HomeFinder Pro has been set up for that specific house and he also receive a Property Investment Profile and a Market Tracker for the neighborhood. Jack does a little happy dance and calls us. He’s already been pre-approved for a mortgage, including a credit check and verification of income. He’s ready to go.
We met at the property at noon and walk through. It is everything and more and is well priced according to the comparable properties in our comparable properties report. Jack goes back to work and we go write the offer up. Using DocuSign, Jack digitally signs the paperwork and gets back to us by 2 PM. The listing agent uses DocuSign too. The paperwork zips around the Internet and is signed by the husband who is in New York at his new job and the wife who is still at home packing up and eager for their new life on the east coast. It’s now 4 PM and Jack has an accepted offer. There’s still 18 hours until Tracy heads out for her run tomorrow and first sees the sign in front of her dream home. Tracy hates Jack and has never met him.
This is fiction but it could happen.
5 Comments on “Why Tracy Lost Her Dream Home”
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Great write-up…. I especially like the idea there are two buyers out there 🙂
The way prices and rates are falling there’s got to be a buying “frenzy” sometime. I have an inspection company and we’re actually busier than we’ve been for the last few months…. opposite of the current statistics. Since we inspect ahead of closed sales I’m hoping there’s a good trend starting.
I’m hoping for a job gain ‘frenzy’!!! Though I don’t see it happening any time soon. What industry will pull us through? It was RE/cheap credit driven the past decade and we all know how sustainable that is.
From what I am seeing, Tracey likely has plenty of time, since most places are priced so high there is no reason to worry about it selling fast. And even if she misses this house, there will be a better one soon, and it’ll likely be less money.
I have been browsing around on various real estate sites/ blogs for the last couple of months and the web dominance that you have earned in your area is impressive. Not sure what your workload is like in life, but if you started committing more time to posting here, I would bet you would begin seeing a lot more visitors. With more visitors you could even start advertising which would create yet another stream of income. Good luck!
There’s an old real estate saying that goes something like, “The home you saw today and want to think about tonight someone saw yesterday and thought about last night.” It could be two days on market or 600. Murphy had his hand in writing it so it also runs true that often someone isn’t interested in something until they know someone else is. Obviously in a “hot” market this is more true but every seller has their own motivation and pricing strategies. If Tracey’s dream home hit the market below market value, for whatever reason or motivation, she’s going to be changing her jogging route because she’s so depressed.