Hidden Homes and Sold Homes – Why Buyers Can’t Find Homes
Our Wise Buyer Program is the solution! With the inventory shortages we have had for a few years now, it is harder for us as full time Brokers to find homes for our buyer clients – and we not only have more house hunting tools and strategies to find properties, we keep our finger on the pulse of the market, know the market better, and learn about upcoming opportunities before they are ever advertised – so naturally buyers looking on their own who have none of these advantages, are indeed having a really hard time.
When you can’t source all possible homes in a quick and efficient way, you will miss out on opportunities to your competition – other buyers who beat you to the best properties first. You will likely end up having to settle for second best, or you might get desperate and make a rushed and unplanned snap purchase where you have to deal directly with the builder or sellers listing agent on your own without the benefit of sound data and guidance that experienced representation provides – which is never a smart move! Or you simply give up and stay where you are.
The thing is – all this is totally unnecessary – since Buyers Brokers are free to buyers! Of course you want to partner the best Buyers Broker you can find – if you settle for a referral from a friend instead of doing some homework vetting agents on your own, you may end up not much better off than being on your own – but at least you won’t have to call 10 agents to see 10 homes – but seriously, you need more than a door opener!
Not all agents have the same skills at finding properties – and I promise you none have the Wise Buyer Program system we use to quickly target then analyze and sift and sort properties until the only the very best homes are identified for your viewing pleasure. Because you will have more insights into the pluses and minuses of each property, you make smarter and safer purchase and offer price decisions. We do the hard work and due diligence to uncover the best properties and help assure a sound investment, so all you have to do is make stress free choices! There is no other program like this!
When you use an ordinary agent who knows very little about homes and construction and who has no home targeting system, you must endure a slow and untargeted home search/viewing process – this guarantees you will see too many unsuitable homes and you will lose out on great homes that get bought up before you even get to see them.
When you don’t have an expert Buyers Broker on your side, here are just some of the problems you face as the Buyer, and some insider reasons why things are so difficult for you:
Home buyers who scour web sites own their own looking for property listings often call us for more details when they find a home they like, and quite often we find ourselves delivering the news that it’s already under contract – or it sold some time ago. This is exasperating I’m sure and there are many reasons this happens.
One reason can be because of small delays in MLS systems updating the public facing Broker MLS sites with the correct Pending or SOLD status. To compound the situation, many popular third party sites like Zillow (which buyers put way too much trust in) are not well updated and often show homes that sold some time ago – a major time waster!
In addition while Broker MLS sites like our own Dual MLS Showcase Software, display new listings every 15 minutes, it often takes 2-4 days for these new listing feeds to be picked up by Zillow or Realtor.com! In a competitive spring/summer market and especially a low inventory market, that kind of delay will guarantee you lose out on many opportunities.
Ideally you want to get a great Buyers Broker involved early in the process – when most people say they are “just looking” – that is probably NOT the time to being doing searches on your own – unless you are a year away from buying and just want to get a feel for things. However, if you plan to buy within 6 months or less – that is exactly the time to get a market expert involved so they can make sure you are looking in all the right places and so you will learn the market – that way you can be prepared to hit the ground running when you’re ready to find the ideal home! You will have a major advantage over other buyers in the market – even those with typical agents with no advanced targeting system like our Wise Buyer Program.
We set up custom tuned automated searches for our clients, and that combined with our market expertise and ongoing manual fine tuning of the entire home search process, gives our clients a major edge in seeing properties before buyers who are looking on their own!
Some homes look available online but are already sold. Even with Broker MLS sites, it can take about 4 days for listings that show as “active” listings (but are really already under contract), to have the online status changed to “pending” or under contract. Unfortunately some buyers give up based on “their market research” thinking there are no homes for them. What these buyers don’t know is that they’re often not even seeing all the MLS listed homes, much less several classes of homes that are not listed on the internet at all – which can be as many as 10 to 20 percent of the homes for sale in a given market.
There are at least 6 types of “hidden” homes for sale that don’t make it onto the MLS: broker pocket listings, new construction homes before drywall stage, for sale by owners, closely held private transactions, defaulting owners, and expired listings. Out of this group, the only class a Buyer can find on their own (if they have a lot of time to waste driving around) are the for sale by owners, and early stage builder new homes . All of the other classes require access to databases consumers can’t access, and/or relationships and connections developed working in the business.
Bottom line, trying to find a home on your own is really pointless – you save no money, you take unnecessary risks, and Buyers Agents and Brokers are free to Buyers!
If you’re in the market, we have the insights and unmatched resources to quickly source virtually every home available – including homes you won’t find on your own.
Call me – Robert Whitfield 678-585-9691
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