Sell Your House Fast
Live from the KC Property Guys and KC Pier Studio in beautiful Kansas City owned over 200 fountains and more barbecue restaurants per capita than anywhere in the nation. Today we’re talking about Reasons To Sell Your House Fast on the Kansas City Real Estate Industry Leader Show, a show about industry leaders from the local Kansas City Metro market for Kansas City real estate related professionals and enthusiasts like you. Now here’s your host, Eric and Lucas Scheele.
Lucas Scheele:
How’s it going everybody? My name is Lucas Scheele and welcome to the Kansas City real estate industry leaders podcast. I’m here with my cohost Eric Scheele today. Eric, how are you doing?
Eric Scheele:
Yeah, I’m doing good. How about you?
Lucas Scheele:
I’m doing awesome. Just trying to enjoy a great day that we have outside, especially for it being December 4th.
Eric Scheele:
December 4th. It’s 57 degrees out.
Lucas Scheele:
It’s pretty intense.
Eric Scheele:
I was with the guys outside. We’re doing some exterior staining and on one house we’re doing some exterior painting on another and just trying to take advantage of a great day because it doesn’t happen in December too often in Kansas City.
Lucas Scheele:
Yeah, absolutely. Today, we actually wanted to share a little bit of reasons, of things with you guys telling you guys some reasons that people want to sell their house quick to cash investors like ourselves.
Eric Scheele:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. From time to time, obviously we kind of break away from the guests and we talk about specifically our industry, which is as a real estate cash investor. The last time I think we did this, we talked about the history of cash investment.
Lucas Scheele:
Yes, we did.
Eric Scheele:
And where it’s headed and some of the regulations about it. But today we’re going to kind of get away from the guests. We’ll have guests in studio next week, correct?
Lucas Scheele:
Yeah, we actually will. We’ll have Ric Fearnside in next week.
Eric Scheele:
Okay. So a realtor. We’re going to actually talk to some realtors next week, but this week we’re actually going to talk about reasons. Reasons that we see in the house when we talked to people of why they would even consider a real estate cash investor. Yeah, I’m excited about it. We’ll dive into it.
Lucas Scheele:
Yeah, me too.
Eric Scheele:
It’s something we do every day. So it’s always kind of fun to talk about things that you do, and this is a big piece of it is people come to us for a specific reason. We hear from them almost daily.
Lucas Scheele:
Yeah, absolutely.
Eric Scheele:
Yeah, let’s jump right in.
Reasons to Consider a Real Estate Cash Investor
Lucas Scheele:
Yeah. When it comes to every day, I know you guys get calls every single day from new people trying to see what they can do with their house, with their property. What are a few common reasons that people want to sell quick or move out?
Eric Scheele:
Yeah. We do. We get calls almost every day or inquiries every day about people looking to sell. Then we end up calling them and talking to them, and we hear everything. I mean, we’re all over the map. I mean, you can talk about … Some of the obvious things, and these are sometimes tough things to talk about, divorce and health issues or job loss or something along those lines. But there’s some people these days that are just simply looking for an alternative to real estate, to the traditional real estate way. That’s actually getting kind of kind of somewhat common. So it could be all over the map. For the most part, we get a lot of calls from people that are in some form of distress, but we also hear from a lot of retirees, downsizers people that have lived in their house for 10, 15, 20, sometimes 30 or 40 years, and the houses are in probably pretty good shape overall, but they’re just dated back into the eighties.
Lucas Scheele:
The eighties, you say.
Eric Scheele:
Well, you know, they’re dated back somewhere. Nineties, eighties, seventies, whatever. But they’ve lived in it and they lived in it well. They’ve used it but not abused it. They know that if they were to go on the MLS with the realtor, that it’s probably going to be crickets. They’re going to pop it up and have that excitement, but then people are going to see the pictures online and they’re just not going to get a response or they’re just going to get beat up. That’s the last thing you want to do is to stick your house on market with excitement of the potential of a sale as a seller.
Lucas Scheele:
Absolutely.
Eric Scheele:
Then most agents are going to set you up with some type of auto feedback, so when people come and look at your house, you’re going to get an email or a text of the feedback that those buyers had. You get beat up into your emotionally tied to house.
Lucas Scheele:
Yeah.
Eric Scheele:
Yeah. That’s no fun. Right? That’s just like saying, “Hey man, your domain, which is your biggest cash investment, didn’t fit my clients because of A, B, C, D.” And you’re like, “Wait a minute. Those are some of the things I like about the house and you’re beating me up on them.”
Lucas Scheele:
When you’re going about saying this is what happens with the realtor side of things there, what’s the difference between selling with a realtor on MLS or just having a cash buyer come in and actually buy the house?
Eric Scheele:
Well, so that’s why some of these people that we’re talking to actually come to us because they are afraid of maybe the feedback or they don’t want to sit on the market or the house may have some disrepair to it. The HVAC may be on its last leg or the roof leaked last winter and they never got around to fixing it. So they know it’s going to be a big ticket item when it comes to the MLS.
Lucas Scheele:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Sell Your House Fast
Eric Scheele:
So they’ll call a real estate cash investor at that point. We come in and we talk about some of the options that a cash investment can bring to the table. Right? The thing with that is, and this is what we tell everybody, is that with a cash investment, it’s obviously going to have to come at a cost. There’s a cash cost to that.
Lucas Scheele:
Yeah, for everything.
Eric Scheele:
So homeowners have to measure what I call time versus value. So if you go on the market with a real estate agent, obviously there’s probably going to be more equity there for you as a homeowner, but it’s also going to be longer on market. A traditional real estate transaction given conventional lending is still going to take 30 to 45 days on average to close that house.
Lucas Scheele:
Oh, wow.
Eric Scheele:
With a cash investor and some of these guys advertise, “Hey, I’ll close your house in seven days, less than 10 days.” But for us, time doesn’t matter. You can close whenever you want. It doesn’t matter. Some people want it quicker, some people want to close it slower. Some people want to plan. Some people need to close quicker than others. But you can do it at a faster pace than the traditional real estate market. You don’t have to go through the inspection period that comes with traditional real estate. In traditional real estate, you actually negotiate your house twice.
Lucas Scheele:
Oh, really?
Eric Scheele:
A lot of people don’t realize that, but you do. You put the house on, let’s say for 150,000, and then the buyers come in through a realtor and they bring in an offer of 145,000. You are okay with that. So you agree to it. But then within 10 days, an inspector who is hired by the buyer, he’s hired, he’s paid by the buyer to come in and take a look at your house and inspect it. The inspection results come back and-
Lucas Scheele:
Not good.
Eric Scheele:
And naturally because he was hired by the buyer, the inspectors are going to find something otherwise he doesn’t feel as if he’s giving a value back to that buyer. So obviously there’s going to be a list. A lot of times it’s a laundry list. That agent that represents the buyer is then going to bring that laundry list back and say, “Okay, well let’s re-negotiate your contract.” So now 145 potentially could come down to 140, 137 or it’s at least going to cost you money to do some of those repairs.
Lucas Scheele:
Absolutely.
Eric Scheele:
In the real estate cash investment world, guess what? As a homeowner, you don’t have to go through all that. The inspection period is done the day that you’ve negotiated a price for that house and the house is purchased as is. Even from a realtor’s perspective, if you’re looking to sell at the MLS, we see this commonly with KC PG Realty Group where we’ll offer some of our houses that we have an inventory in “as is” condition on the MLS. Not to necessarily a cash investor, but on the MLS we’ll offer that house as is.
Eric Scheele:
We even see buyers come in through a real estate agent, they look at the house under the impression and the knowledge that this house is being sold “as is”. Well, they’ll put in an offer, but yet they’ll still do a visual inspection or they’ll hire an inspector and the inspector will take a look at the house obviously. That agent will still sometimes come back and ask for things even “as is”. In the cash real estate world, you don’t necessarily have that, at least for us at KC Property Guys, when we say we’re going to buy the house as is, we don’t re-negotiate. Our number is the number, it doesn’t change.
Lucas Scheele:
Yeah.
Eric Scheele:
But it can even change on the real estate world. So those are reasons why homeowners may consider a cash option simply because you don’t have to put up with some of the headaches that come along with the traditional negotiation.
Lucas Scheele:
Yeah.
Sell Your House Fast – The “Easy” Button
Eric Scheele:
One of the things we talk about is like, “Hey, let’s stick the easy button out there.” You know, the old staples commercial? Yeah. Let’s stick the easy button out there on the table and if-
Lucas Scheele:
That was easy.
Eric Scheele:
Yeah. That was easy. If you really want to hit the … I say this lot, “Look, don’t call me over to your house because if you really want to sell your house in 10 minutes, there’s going to be an easy button there and you literally can sell your house in 10 minutes. It’ll come at a cost because you’re not paying the realtors now. I’m going to pay the realtors. You’re not going to fix up your house now. I’m going to fix up the house.” So obviously there has to be a cash number there, and there has to be a devalue to the equity because of that cash number and because the liability that we’re taking on as cash investors.
Eric Scheele:
But if you’re looking for more equity, you always want to go through a realtor because there’s more equity out there. You just have to put up with some of the things that come along with that. The inspections, the timeline. Like I said originally, it’s always a time versus equity or a time versus cash relationship that people have to kind of measure when considering selling to a real estate cash investor versus going to a realtor.
Lucas Scheele:
Yeah. Time versus cash is really huge when it comes to that. But obviously some homeowners still want to sell their house, but they’re going to be in a lot of debt. Some of them are being foreclosed on, stuff like that.
Eric Scheele:
Lowering the value.
Lucas Scheele:
Exactly. What if the loan to value ratio is too low? Can you not do anything with that?
Eric Scheele:
Yeah. So let’s go back to our example. You have $150,000 house. You owe 125. In a traditional real estate world, if you’re trying to sell at 150, you’ve got to pay the realtors 6%. 6% off of 150, you’re at $8,500 right there. Now you’re at 141, 141,500 and so you’re already chipping away towards the 125 number. So can you go to a cash investor at that point? It’s probably going to be tough. But for us on the KC Property Guys side, there’s options there. If you go to our website, it says Creative Real Estate Solutions. Well it’s creative because we’ve seen so many people, we’ve talked to so many different different folks and we’ve looked at so many different life variables and worked through situations that are tight where loan to value is extremely low. There are ways that you can work through that and there are options that are out there. If we’re speaking to homeowners and they know they owe a lot, as long as you’re not upside down, there’s potential. Let’s put it that way.
Lucas Scheele:
Okay.
Eric Scheele:
There’s potential that you can still work with cash investors, specifically someone who has more options than just simply a cash number. The simple cash number guys going to be tough to sell to.
Lucas Scheele:
So it’s always a good option to just call and see what can happen.
Eric Scheele:
Explore.
Lucas Scheele:
Explore.
Eric Scheele:
Yeah. Explore your options. Do your research, explore your options, hear them out, and if it doesn’t work, guess what? Nobody’s hurt. You just say no or say, “Yeah, I tried.” But then you go to your other options. Plan B is, okay, if you’re going to create the most equity, I’ve got to go through a realtor. Let’s do it. Let’s go through a realtor. Or if you want to look at some creative solutions, myself at KC Property Guys has creative solutions. I’m sure there’s other real estate investors out there that may have some creative solutions that truly offer a genuine benefit to the homeowner. There’s some gamesmanship where people work with some kind of slim loan to value options for homeowners that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend. So seller beware, I guess, when that loan to value is tight.
Lucas Scheele:
Yeah. When you say seller beware, I guess, what kind of advice would you just give to everybody is they’re trying to-
Eric Scheele:
Do your research, right?
Lucas Scheele:
Do the research. Yeah. Always. Yeah.
Check Reviews
Eric Scheele:
Google. I think we talked about this like last time too is Google is a great mediator. It tells all a lot of times. You can read the reviews of people, make sure people have a presence, a web presence. Make sure if they’re listed with the BBB. Call the Better Business Bureau, see if these guys are listed with them. I mean, check who you’re dealing with because there isn’t a lot of strict state or city regulation for the cash investment world. It’s very open. There’s no realtor board of Kansas that oversees and supervises the cash investment world. So it really comes down to the homeowner to do their homework. The best way you can do your homework is to do your research. Google’s a great way to do research on anybody, but especially cash investors. So seller beware of some of those programs that are out there. If numbers sound too good to be true, many times they probably are too good to be true.
Sell Your House Fast
Eric Scheele:
The last thing that you want to do as a homeowner is to, and I see this a lot, here’s a good example for you. Someone who is downsizing or moving to a different state, changing jobs. We’ve worked with tons of people changing jobs, moving to Arkansas to work for Walmart, whatever it may be. But the last thing you want to do is go with that too good to be true number when you’re leaving this house and going out of state and you come down to three days before closing, guess what you’ve done? You’ve set up the movers, you’ve probably have already moved. You have a destination where you’re going to, wherever you’re going remotely, you’ve probably sent over your deposits. So you have a cash investment, a time investment, an emotional investment of moving. You get down to the last two or three days of closing and all of a sudden that number that was too good to be true or that guy that you didn’t do the research with, that person you didn’t do or the group that you didn’t do the research with, backs out on you in the 11th hour.
Sell Your House Fast
Eric Scheele:
Unfortunately I’ve got those calls from people where I had looked at the house maybe prior and they went with a different option and then all of a sudden I get a call back saying this thing …
Lucas Scheele:
Blew up in my face.
Sell Your House Fast
Eric Scheele:
Blew up and I need help. Just try to avoid those types of things by doing the research ahead of time. Again, you explore it. Explore those options and by exploring the options you are going to have … You’ll be A, more educated, and B, strategically you’ll be better positioned to make the right decision on how to handle what we talk about a lot is most people’s biggest investment that they’re going to make in their lifetime. You want to make sure you take care of making the right decisions for the right reasons.
Lucas Scheele:
For sure. Absolutely. Well thank you so much for all of your information you’ve given us today. Thank you guys for joining in with us. We’ll have to catch you on the next episode, but this has been some reasons why people want to sell to the fast cash investor. I guess we just catch you next time. You guys have a great day.
Eric Scheele:
Take care.
Thanks for joining us this week for Reasons To Sell Your House Fast on the Kansas City Real Estate Industry Leader Show. Please support all things local to Kansas City. Hey, be sure to subscribe and share our podcast on Facebook and LinkedIn. This has been a KC Property Guys production. KCpropertyguys.com.
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