Done Deal...fast

I've been writing recently about a townhouse I had listed in Laurel that had run into a few, er, challenges along the way.

There was the friend of the Sellers who had agreed to do some contracting work on the Sellers house to get it ready for sale. It involved tearing up the old (really old) carpet and installing a bamboo laminate. It involved some painting and dry wall work. The real challenge with this arrangement was that the friend was not a professional contractor. He had another real day job doing something completely different. This was just something he was doing as a favor to his friend.

That took about three months. Time the house could have been on the market had the Sellers shelled out some cash to a pro to just rip up the old carpet and put down some new and get a handyman in to do the painting and drywall.

By this time, the Seller was really, really, anxious to sell the house. They had moved out and away and didn't like the idea of paying two mortgages.

They agreed upon a price and we put it out there. Bam! Within days, we were getting multiple offers. Of course, some were of the "let's low ball the heck out of them just to see" type offers but one came in that was pretty nice. Then there was the inspections issues. We got past those with lowering the price and selling in "as is" condition (luckily we had a motivated buyer).

So, the whole ting took something less than 30 days from the day it was in the MLS to the day of settlement. A buyer that wanted to buy and a seller that wanted to sell.

This is the real bottom line -- the sellers had equity in their home. Yes, they had a smallish mortgage on it but they had plenty of room to sell the house. The Sellers were willing to price the home to sell. Not to grab that last $1,000 or to price it high and negotiate down or any of the other typical strategies that aren't working in today's market. The Sellers were very clear. Sell the house.

Luckily, we had a buyer with an agent that knew that at the price we had the home listed for that there would probably be multiple offers. So she made a good offer -- much better than all the others -- and it gave us the room we needed to work with the inspection issue.

In the end, the buyer (with the help of a VA loan and lots of closing help from the Seller) bought the house for ZERO money out-of-pocket, the Sellers got a nice check for the equity (minus costs) they had in their home, the Realtors got paid and everybody was smiling!