I hate the term "motivated seller"

[Brian Bagdasarian]

Off-market sellers are rarely motivated. 

They often are backed into a corner due to an unfortunate or unforeseen situation. If they were truly motivated, they would be listing their house on the MLS. If they haven't, but they choose to sell off-market, its not because they were motivated, but rather because they wanted or needed an exit, but didn't know what to do.

Why am I bringing this up? A single word - empathy. Most of the people that we purchase from off-market have found themselves in a situation, while not always truly bad, where selling their home to us makes the most financial sense. We regularly tell people selling to us isn't their best move. We do that because we're empathetic to their situation, and actually care about their outcome. If they can make more selling it on the open market, we tell them that. If they want to believe that they can, but the reality is that the home needs more work than they realize, we tell them that too. Those are the ones we buy.

We believe that when we buy a home off-market, and then either rehab it ourselves or pass it along to one of our partners that we're doing right by all involved - the seller, ourselves, our partners, and the community where the home is located.In this crazy world we're living in compassion and empathy are in short supply. Instead of looking for "motivated sellers", look for people that you can help out of a less than ideal situation.

I believe that doing this makes the world a little better.

What do you think?