Buyers are you out there on your own going to open houses, thinking that maybe you’ll meet an agent at an open house? It’s gonna be really competitive and so you’ll just write an offer with that agent. I meet buyers like you everyday in my open houses.
I will tell you that you’re too late when you’re working with this kind of strategy. Home buyers who come into the open houses and are not represented are not going to be prepared to make an offer. Often homes are listed on a Thursday and sold the following Wednesday or Thursday, with the first open house being on Sunday.
When I meet these buyers often they don’t have their pre-approvals or underwriting in order and they just don’t have the knowledge of the market in order to be able to write offers. Believe it or not listing agents, good ones, are not trying to double end deals. Good listing agents are really working on behalf of the seller. I don’t ever work with buyers who come into my open houses.
This strategy will not put you ahead. It will only put you behind. If you want to be competitive in this market I would highly recommend getting into a relationship with an agent. Work in advance with that agent to help get educated on the market, get your head around what has sold previously to make sure that you understand where the market is going.
When you’re working with an agent on my team we spend countless hours with you before writing our first offer. The average agent in San Francisco writes 5 to 8 offers prior to getting a client into contract. Our team hardly ever writes more than 1 or 2 offers.
The reason why is because we do so much work upfront, helping our clients understand the market, understand the disclosures, getting their pre-approvals in order so that when they see that house they’re ready to write.
The average time it takes to prepare an offer for you is gonna be about 5 or 10 hours by the time you go to the house a couple of times, review the disclosure and go over everything with your agent. If you’re writing 5 to 8 offers, that’s 5 to 8 heartbreaks and that’s about 80 hours of your time.
If you want to save time, money and heartbreak schedule a session with my team and we’ll help you get started on buying a home in San Francisco.
