For Professionals of the Probate and Trust Industry

Category: Uncategorized

Don’t Send Me Business

Your client is an Administrator with full authority.  They want to sell real property directly to a cash buyer without a realtor (because they want to avoid paying a commission). 

What should you do?

You should educate your client that this is a very bad idea.

Most often probate administrators are not real estate experts.

I would explain the impact of opting out of the MLS.   If the administrator excludes the property from the MLS, they are authorizing limited exposure of the property and no marketing or advertising of the property to the public.  This means there’s no competition involved in the sale of real estate, which is effectively what drives sales prices up as high as possible. 

When there’s only one buyer at the table and the buyer knows this, what is their motivation to pay more?  Absolutely nothing!  The buyer will be in the driver’s seat and will take full advantage of the seller and get a good deal for themselves.  

Having only one buyer at the table, puts the seller at a disadvantage and gives the buyer negotiating leverage before getting into escrow, and again during escrow (to ask for a price reduction even if they previously indicated they would not do so).  

Should the seller decide to market the property and price it competitively, this could generate a multiple offer situation and with an experienced broker, the broker could push the prices up as high as the market will bear.  Having multiple buyers interested in a property gives the seller negotiating leverage and allows the estate to yield the greatest return.

In my opinion, not utilizing an experienced real estate broker to sell the property negatively impacts the sales price and the estate would be leaving money on the table. 

Helping a Family in Crisis: Real Estate Matters

It was an honor to be able to help this family during a time of crisis. Read my last post titled “Real Estate 911! Wow, what a hustle!” for the background on this Garden Grove property. The administrator of the estate wrote the Google review below:

“Orit is a superstar! She handled an estate sale for us and took incredibly good care of us. The house was in the middle of a renovation, had multiple creditor issues, was full of personal property and was set to be foreclosed on in around two weeks. It was a nightmare situation during a very difficult time for our family. However, Orit and her team took it all in stride.

She took quick action and immediately had a team in place. From the overgrown grass to the rotting pool, her team worked at lightning fast speeds to get the house cleaned up, fixed up and creditor issues squared away. Being Cc’d on her emails, everyone she worked and/or contracted with fired on all cylinders and worked as a team to get the job done. It was like a movie seeing everyone pitch in and work together. She made herself available all hours of the night and always showed the utmost respect and compassion throughout.

At first, we were hoping to just avoid a foreclosure sale and hopefully just get the creditors taken care of. I was expecting to be in the red after the sale but after Orit stepped in, the estate is walking away with a 6 figure net recovery. Simply incredible.

She is very knowledgeable and it really helped us meet all the deadlines and avoid the foreclosure auction. She is also very resourceful and seemed to have a person on call for every job necessary. She never let the pressure get to her and everything got done very efficiently. Thank you Orit, you made this difficult process painless! My family is very grateful to you.”

Sold in 3 Days! Wow!

I see agents boasting about selling a property in one, two, or three days. And some people think this is impressive. 

After nearly 20 years in the business, I still do not understand what there is to boast about.

Is it not better to give the property the proper exposure and leave it active on the market for 10 days or so, and have at least two open houses (on consecutive weekends)?

Do we not want to give properties time on the market to expose them to as many buyers as possible?

Is it not better to create competition among buyers by waiting to have a multiple-offer situation? 

If the property remains on the market long enough this can easily result in competition among buyers with a multiple-offer situation, which results in increasing the purchase price as high as possible, as it does in bidding wars.