Where can home buyers, sellers, and investors find and ask for help when transactions start falling apart?
Real estate deals don’t always run through smoothly. Various hiccups can stall, derail, or at least change the dynamics and numbers. How buyers and sellers react to the potential blunders is what is incredibly important. It can make all the difference in whether the transaction is completed, what the final numbers look like, and what legal and financial liability there is. It can also impact relationships and reputation, as well as future ability to buy and sell properties. So where is the help?
Common Issues
Issues frequently arise during the transaction process; however, it’s a matter of how these challenges are navigated. Sometimes they are small paperwork quirks and documents that need to be resubmitted to mortgage underwriters or home owner associations. In other cases, inability to provide certain documents in the required form might jeopardize the closing or result in more expensive loan terms. Title issues, availability of certain parties important to the transaction, property damage, and squatters can all potentially kill the deal if not handled well and quickly. Sometimes it may be vendors not doing their jobs well; like a mortgage lender engaging in bait and switch tactics and constantly raising interests rates and cash to close requirements. Make the right moves and you may get everything you wanted out of the deal. Make the wrong ones and you could not only lose the deal but also get sued in the process.
So where can the help to overcome these challenges be found? Who should you ask for help to achieve the best outcome?
Upfront Real Estate Education
It pays to know before you get in. The more you learn about the real estate transaction process upfront, the better prepared you will be. The more you know, the better you will select vendors and professionals, the more secure your contracts will be, the more likely you’ll anticipate issues in advance, and the way you will more effectively and rapidly squash problems. So read up on the process in advance. Do your homework. Educate yourself.
Experienced Friends & Family
If you have friends and family members that are truly experienced in buying and selling real estate, it may be worth asking for their input when issues come up. However, note – the industry is constantly changing. The processes and laws and what is considered typical varies between states and even counties.
Other Real Estate Industry Professionals
If you’ve got an issue with a title company, Realtor, or mortgage company, it makes sense to talk to others in that profession. Shop around and get input from others. You may get completely different answers. However, do keep in mind the motivations of those you are quizzing. They probably want to win your business and therefore may tell you what you want to hear just to get it. Be careful about switching unless you are 100 percent positive they can achieve what the others couldn’t.
The Internet
The web offers a vast amount of information. A lot of it can be bad -or just flat out wrong – but there is some great and valuable information out there for free too. Right from your smartphone, you can get access to mortgage underwriting guidelines and rate sheets, legal Q&A sites, groups of real estate investors on Facebook, and reputable blogs like CT Homes and FortuneBuilders. This information is invaluable. Make sure to take a look at the publication date of certain blogs to ensure that they are current and reliable. Be careful to only get answers from those that really know and be sure those answers apply to your situation and niche, otherwise you may make the wrong move and waste your time.
Real Estate Attorneys
It always pays to have a great real estate attorney on standby. Hopefully you won’t need them, but just being able to ask them questions when issues arise can often save your deal and thousands of dollars. The best should be able to help you leap what appear to be huge hurdles with a simple email or text. Make sure that attorney works for you and not anyone else in the transaction.
Real Estate Coaches
For frequent buyers and sellers like real estate investors, it really pays to have a real estate coach. This isn’t just someone who can tell you the black and white letter of the law or contract language, but one who will also help strategize solutions and if needed, restructure deals to get them done, save you money, and stay profitable.
Summary
Many real estate transactions will at least run into minor hitches. These are normally pretty easily ironed out. For the tougher scenarios review the above, pool your input, weigh the advice based on the sources you received it from, do the real math, and ask yourself: what is the right thing to do.
