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By Bart Treece / 3 On Your Side producer

In this slow real estate market, some Realtors are coming up with innovative ideas, but not all of them work.

It has to do with something called the Guaranteed Sale Program. But one Valley couple selling their home found out a guarantee is really not a guarantee at all.

“I don’t know if it’s a TV legal term, but I got hosed,” Brandon Love said.

That about sums up Love’s experience with an innovative concept in real estate called the Guaranteed Sale Program.”

It sounded like a great idea because Love and his wife, Holly, were trying to sell their Phoenix home and upgrade to a bigger home at the same time.

“We realized our old house was much too small,” he said.

To make the move, Love used the Guaranteed Sale Program offered by real estate agents Gary and Caryn Shannon of Keller Williams Realty Southeast Valley.

According to the deal, if the Shannons couldn’t sell the couple’s home in three months, they would buy it.

Because the sale was “guaranteed,” the Loves thought it was a no-brainer.

“At the time, I’m signing this contract, thinking it’s too good to be true,” Brandon Love said.

As part of the “guaranteed” deal, the couple had to buy a new KB home, which they did in Surprise. They even moved in.

“We love it when you walk in the door,” Love said. “It’s wide open.”

But three months came and went with no contract on their existing home. As a result, Love says he and his wife became concerned the Shannons were not going to follow through with their Guaranteed Sale Program.

However, they were reassured when one of their agents left this phone message: “Hi, this is Caryn Shannon over at Keller Williams. We are still planning to move forward with that Guaranteed Sale Program on your home. It’s the right thing to do.”

But after that optimistic message, Love says they received a letter from an attorney, saying the Shannons were “no longer in a position to buy their home.”

In other words, forget that contract the Loves signed, forget the fact the fact they already moved, and forget that so-called guarantee.

All of a sudden it doesn’t matter, meaning the couple are now stuck paying two mortgages.

Nice guarantee.

“Every month it costs me a big chunk of my money,” Love said.

3 On Your Side contacted Keller Williams and the Shannon team for answers.

Instead, an attorney contacted us and confirmed that the Shannons will not buy the Loves’ home despite that guarantee.

Regardless, the Loves aren’t happy they’re in this mess and are disappointed nobody has stepped up to make it right.

“I haven’t gotten a ‘my bad’ or an apology,” Love said. “I don’t think it’s right, fair aside.”

One option right now for the Loves is to file a lawsuit against their Realtors and they are considering it.

By the way, the contract is with the Realtors only. KB Homes and Keller Williams, as far as we can tell, are really not to blame.

Real Estate Success Institute is located just off of Hwy 11 near Trussville and Roebuck and just off of I-59. Click here for a map to the school. The phone number is 833-6325.

Real estate analysts (and what American is not among them these days?) tend to survey the sea of for sale signs in most areas and join the gloomy headline writers who conclude that there are not enough ready, willing and able buyers in the market place.

Not so, gentle reader! The shortfall is among sellers, of which there are relatively few treading water in the aforementioned sea.
“Whoa, Nellie!” you might exclaim (ignoring the by-line clearly displayed above), “any fool, including the by-lined fool, can see that it’s buyers that are now in short supply.”

In so doing, you might cite the hordes of hungry house-hunters who roamed the house-hunting roadways during the many months of a recently-deceased feeding frenzy, fueled by mortgage lenders with deep pockets and all the fiscal restraint of sailors on leave.

It is a now a fact of real estate life in most areas that their numbers - and that financial fuel - have shrunk like last month’s birthday balloons, and it’s true that there are fewer prospective buyers rummaging through the current logjam of listings.
Enter the law (not the theory or fantasy) of supply and demand, which dictates that when the number of consumers is dwarfed by a surplus of products, either prices take a hit or activity takes a holiday.

That reality underpins my contention that, while there may be too many homes for sale, there are too few legitimate sellers offering them.

This position is backed up by more than a half-century of experience on and behind the firing line of real estate brokerage, during which I have seen and survived several cycles of inflation, deflation and stagflation, as well as so-called sellers’ markets which morphed into buyers’ markets and vice versa.

Through all that trauma, certain facts remained unchanged - facts that are being ignored by too many would-be sellers and, sadly, pseudo-professionals. They are as follows:

1. No home in history has ever sold for a penny more than the best offer obtainable from the best buyer available in the then-current market.

2. The only way to determine the true value of a home is to thoroughly and aggressively test the market and challenge the competition. That process need not be a lengthy one, since buyers and their agents do comparison shopping and readily react to an attractive offering.

3. Once that procedure has been pursued, properties remaining unsold for an extended period of time are, quite simply, overpriced. Forget about what similar houses sold for in the past (which is history), or what those would-be sellers might have invested in their homes (which is irrelevant), or what qualified appraisers say they are worth (which are only opinions). The critical test is exposing one’s home to the greatest practical number of prospective buyers and active agents, and then analyzing the results.

4. A home that is appropriately priced and effectively marketed, preferably by competent professionals, will ALWAYS attract attention, generate activity and ALWAYS sell for what it’s worth (refer to Fact #1 above).

The problem today is not that there are too few buyers. Demand is what it is and neither wishful thinking nor wistful memories will increase its size.

The more serious shortage is of genuine sellers; i.e., those who meet these specific criteria:
a) They are willing and able to accept the best price obtainable from the best buyer available in the current market, and
b) They have something to lose if they don’t do so.

“Sellers” who do not fit that mold are not sellers at all and should be encouraged to take their properties off the market. (Realistically, they’re not actually ON the market, anyway!)
The market is not always kind, but it is never wrong - and those who believe otherwise pay a heavy price for ignoring “The Facts Of Life For Home Sellers.”

FOOTNOTE: For a further dose of this perhaps-unpleasant medicine, visit www.joeklock.com and click on that caption. You have nothing to lose - except, maybe, a pipe dream.
If that doesn’t work for you, take two antacids or a short snort and DON’T call me in the morning!

Here’s the bottom line - take it to the bank or to any nearby Wailing Wall: When proper pricing is combined with effective marketing, there is a buyer for everything and, given those conditions, any home can be sold in any market.
The ritual dances of negotiation may change with market fluctuations, but the drumbeat of reality does not!

“IF I CAN’T BE YOUR GOVERNOR, THEN LET ME BE YOUR REALTOR!”

Office: (205)-979-8500
Cell: (205)-643-2527

Email: lucybaxley@remax.net, beckynichols@remax.net, blakenichols@remax.net
or jimsmith@remax.net

Thinking of buying a home? Want to avoid the biggest pitfalls? Be sure you have a licensed professional on YOUR side! Call Rod Hicks at 205-222-3500 today! Email me. Please visit my website BirminghamWebPage for local information.