"Sure your home will sell. Besides (wink, wink), do you really want some dirty tenant destroying your house and using the would-be rent money to up fit their new meth lab?" ("Aggressive" Charlotte Realtor pushing for a "sale only" listing agreement)
"Everything became pretty clear at that moment. Being a rock star looked like a great job." (Singer Tom Petty reminiscing about meeting Elvis Presley as an 11-year old)
Hoop Dreams was a documentary based on two Chicago high school students, William Gates and Arthur Agee, who had dreams of playing in the National Basketball Association. They both went to a top Indiana private high school that NBA great Isaiah Thomas had attended, practiced all of the time, and did well in the all-star camps. Their friends told them they were great, school mates looked up to them, and they just knew the NBA was in their futures.
Of course, neither of them made it to the NBA; it's not a surprise. I think we've heard this story a million times. A kid puts all his eggs in the sports basket and is left with no future when it doesn't pan out. This has fostered the NCAA's student-athlete model (kids are students first, athletes second); I'm sure you've seen the ubiquitous commercials where student-athletes are filmed saying, "I was a NCAA athlete, but upon graduation, I'll be going pro in something else." Then it shoots to this early twenty-something teaching tuba to kids or putting on a real estate firm pin (well, maybe not yet, but give the National Association of Realtors time).
I mean, let's be real. I'd rather be a NBA player than, let's say, a residential property manager in Charlotte. Wouldn't you? Let's see... You get to be a physical specimen (as you basically work out for a living), have adoring fans follow you from town to town, make millions of dollars, decorate your mansion(s) as tackily as you want, and drive a different sports car every day of the month. We could probably make this arrangement work, right? So why wouldn't we encourage all kids growing up to be a NBA (or WNBA) players? We've seen the "Whatever Your Mind Can Conceive, You Can Achieve!" banners hanging in our middle school classrooms. Didn't we conceive this? Then it should have happened for us, right?
Well, real life took over. We grew up to be five feet six inches tall. Our vertical leaps are barely clearing the jump ropes. We're getting winded walking to the mailbox. We're not even the best basketball player in our own families; Mom's set shot is just impossible to guard!
I see a similar misguided scenario coming from the mouths of Realtors. "Sure, you can sell your house. Let me just list it ‘For Sale" for you. I'm sure it won't take that long." Oh really? What about the eight other houses in your subdivision for sale that include two in foreclosure selling for $80K less than yours? Buyers will be lining up to purchase your listing? Why? "It's because I buried a miniature statue of Saint DefinitelySellQuickly in your front yard for luck. It always works."
The odds of selling some of the houses that are listed on the market are not far off from the odds of making the NBA. Yet I commonly see vacant houses for sale sit on the market for over a year. I wonder who is going to buy them when they are not even priced in the ballpark of the other homes for sale. Yes, miracles do happen; I'm not sure that's a business plan, though. And, if it is, why not aim higher and try the NBA thing?
Yes, some sellers will insist on putting their house up for sale only and eating the monthly costs. I'm not talking about the clients who have cash to burn. But I am talking about the Realtors who are not educating and offering their sellers other options to sell such as rent-to-own, lease options, and seller financing. Sellers need to know about these! These options create opportunities for tenant-buyers which, in turn, give us a fluid market to transact real estate for the sellers (when banks aren't lending). It's good for everyone!
"Tenants are risky. I would never rent-to-sell my own house!" I agree- selling outright is better!! But that can be said of a lot of things in life. Marrying a billionaire supermodel would have been a better option than marrying your spouse. Taking a part-time job making $10M a year would have been a better option than your current gig. Watching the Super Bowl in the commissioner's luxury box last year would have been a better option than going to your buddy, Phil's, place (with stale pretzels, a cracked 20-inch television screen, and his whining wife). The point I'm trying to make is that the best options are not always the ones that are realistically available.
Unless you are stapling a winning lottery ticket to the client's copy of the listing agreement, make sure the rent-to-own and lease conversations happen in this economy. Making the NBA is hard, especially when Mom is beating you up in the driveway!
Brett Furniss is the President & Owner of BDF Realty, "Charlotte's Most Innovative Property Management & Investment Company" (www.BDFRealty.com and www.RentToSell.com). You can follow his Twitter thoughts on the Charlotte real estate market by clicking on http://twitter.com/bdfrealty. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled "How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home" (http://www.renttosell.com/RTS-Book.html) which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market.
