First, Liens or No Liens – Pros and Cons
Selling a house traditionally has many ups and downs. As a start, it can take on average six weeks to get an offer and close. It can go much longer in a buyer’s market and inevitably saddles you with cash outlays to meet expected show-ready standards. Realtors promote themselves as facilitators who can get you fair value fast. Agent marketing involves getting your home listed on the MLS to compete with others in the neighborhood. It means attending to things like:
- Curb appeal
- Decluttering
- Staging
- Fixing up disrepair on walls, cabinets, and fixtures
Even then, an offer in hand isn’t an offer until after the home inspection, and possibly the buyer’s lender appraises the property. In numerous cases, these unavoidable events can disrupt what may have seemed to be a done deal and, on occasion, implodes it entirely. In between all this, you have to put up with prospects touring the house every second day. Also, getting the kids and the pets out of the way. Face it, selling through an agent has its challenges.
That’s Why Home Cash Buyers as an Alternative Category Have Made Such an Impact
They promise to submit an unassailable cash offer that erases the mortgage company appraisers from the equation and gets the home inspection out of the way before you see the bottom line. They also save sellers the 6% sales commission and a list of other incidental fees. As professionals, they emphasize that outside and inside shoddiness won’t deflate the offer because they look past all that. The big punchline is that they position you to close inside a week if that type of speed suits you. However, some curveballs can upset the fast-close applecart. One of the biggest are liens on the home.
Liens on the Home Can Be a Severe Hurdle
No matter who the buyer is, they can’t push liens aside without a serious creditor conversation. The title company won’t give the transaction a clean bill of health unless sellers settle all registered lien claimants. Liens are publicly recorded, homeowner debts that creditors rely on the house sale proceeds to resolve (i.e., whenever that occurs). Remember, a lien represents a supplier or non-mortgage lender whom the home seller failed to pay for an advance, product delivered, or services rendered. In such instances, the lienholder could pack substantial pent-up frustration and resentment, especially if the time-lapse is high.
Liens inevitably fog up clean transfer to the eventual homebuyer. For that reason, realtors are reluctant to take on these real estate “extra-baggage projects” because it almost always delays commission payouts. Even if you can find a realtor to go with it, they will likely go in with the idea of full lien settlement. For the seller, that’s a worst-case scenario.
As described above, in sticky situations, a home cash buyer – like Home Buyers Birmingham – is worth its weight in gold. They have the temperament and talent pool to put liens in the rearview mirror quickly by:
- Routinely connecting with the lien holder, approaching the matter without emotion, and a constructive approach.
- Detecting if the lienholder is ready to accept a discount – cents in the dollar perhaps – to release the lien.
In most cases, lien judgments are not cast-iron arrangements, and there’s significant room to discuss debt reductions. In negotiations, disclosing too much information to the creditor frequently results in an unsatisfactory outcome. So, the compelling benefit of letting an expert home cash buyer front for you with lienholders is that they know the law and your rights intimately. Every lien is solvable with tact and a little patience, especially if the negotiator knows how to get liens partially or wholly released before or on closing. Both are viable options, as long as the terms are clear and agreed to in writing.
How to Work with Birmingham Home Buyers When You Know You Have Liens on Your House
- Analyze your liens before calling for your 24-hour offer. Categorize them on a scale from “Non-negotiable” to “Highly negotiable” (or “Don’t know”) and tot up the numbers on each. That’s how you create transparency – helping to clear the stage going forward.
- Technically, you could try wading into lienholder territory yourself to kick the issues to the curb. Unfortunately, it seldom happens that way because you’re too emotionally involved. You’ll probably give too much away, and the creditor will see an advantage in holding up your sale.
- Trust in Birmingham Home Buyer’s expertise as your partners in this transaction. They won’t fold in the thick of a difficult conversation, and each time they get a lien reduction, it’s money in your pocket.
- The Home Buyers Birmingham team is a genuine asset for home sellers where liens on the property are a factor. You’ll quickly gain substantial confidence in the team members’ ability to say the right things at the right time to get a mutually acceptable result.
- Home Buyers Birmingham doesn’t charge you extra to get over the speed bumps in one piece, so why doublethink it? Get the A-team in your corner.
Conclusion
Liens complicating single-family home sales is another big reason to bypass traditional realtors as the best way to get fair value without aggravation. Home Buyers Birmingham will unfailingly step into the breach and remove all the ifs and buts of liens without compromising your offer price too much. Together with all the other advantages listed above under “liens or no liens,” it’s a no-brainer for home sellers going into the 2020s.
Home Buyers Birmingham
1821 11th Avenue South Suite #55331
Birmingham, Alabama 35205