Buying from a private seller

[Ryan MacDonald]

My wife and I are looking to buy a primary residence and we are looking in specific neighborhoods within our destination city in central Texas. I just found out that there is a FSBO home currently in one of our target neighborhoods. We are currently using a realtor via our home relocation company that we are required to use in order to be eligible for the great benefits package. That being said, does anyone have experience from buy a FSBO home when they are not using a realtor and you have to? Are there usually issues from these private sellers where they don't want to have the buyer use a realtor in order to save on the seller fee's? If I work with a private seller through my realtor, is there anything that I need to know beforehand? I'm still going to get a home inspection, appraisal and all of that noise. I know they are scheduled to have the home listed through a realtor on Thursday but prefer to have the home sold before that point so that they can avoid paying the realtor fees. Perhaps if we use a realtor and they don't, it won't create too much of a hassle for them since they are already in process of going that route. Any thoughts or experiences would be greatly appreciated.

To be honest, I'm just getting started and still in the education phase so I'm not too comfortable with the process of working without realtors. Especially since out benefits package requires us to use one. This home is all original and was built in 1972. The owner's parents passed away so they have inherited it and are currently looking to get rid of it so they sound like very motivated sellers. I'm really up to the idea of rehabbing the home as a primary residence as some homes in the neighborhood go up to $450K and the sellers are currently trying to sell this one for $225K. It's a 3/2 and 2030 sq ft and we would look at converting it to a 4/2 since this will be a long term home. With that much potential for ARV (I haven't quite ran the numbers because I'm still not sure how to), I think it would be best to make an offer for at most $200K as it would need to be updated. Hopefully my wife would go for it.