Buying a house right now could be an Olympic sport it’s THAT competitive. Here’s a few tips for how to stand out from the competition.
1. Offer shorter or longer settlement terms
Settlement is the date that the buyer (hopefully that’s you) pays the balance of the purchase price, and very excitingly gets the keys to their new home! Sometimes a seller may want a shorter settlement term, so if you can offer them that, that may make you the successful bidder even if you are offering the same amount as another buyer who can’t settle earlier than the standard 6 weeks (for NSW).
Conversely, sometimes the seller may in fact want a longer settlement term. For example, they may have not yet found a house that they are moving into, so by you being flexible with a longer than usual settlement you are making yourself an attractive buyer to them.
2. Have your finance ready to go
Whilst it’s not uncommon for people to come to us having already fallen in love with a house, and asking for our help to get them a bank loan to fund the house they’re now desperate to buy, in an ideal world, you’d have your pre-approval sorted before you go house shopping.
To get your pre-approval sorted with a lender, we’ll go through the process of establishing how much you can borrow (this is based on things such as income, debts, amount of deposit saved).
If a lender deems you eligible for a loan, they’ll offer you conditional approval, which make you very attractive to the seller as it shows them you’re ready to go and are serious about this purchase. That is you are the very opposite to what is sometimes termed in real estate circles as a ‘time waster’.
It makes you a more reliable option for a seller to accept an offer from, vs another buyers who hasn’t sorted their finances yet!
3. Make it easy for them
Did your kids like the cubby house in the house’s backyard? Did you really like their outdoor dining set? Think about offering a bit extra for that to be an inclusion. When seller’s are considering moving on, they often might wonder what the costs are of relocating a cubby house, or even more likely their own family may have outgrown it. And that outdoor dining table which was so perfect for the space at that house, mightn’t be something that they’ll have room for at their next place, especially if they’re downgrading, and if you really like it why not consider throwing some extra money at them for them to be included? You’d be surprised that even when dealing in such large sums of money as a purchase price, a few extra hundred dollars for something you want, and that solves for the seller’s own mental load, makes you a very appealing buyer. Win-win for everyone!
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