All Forum Posts by: Mike Flynn

Hi Chad! I'm interested to know if there was a resolution to your situation? I am currently building a spec home and have a similar situation working with a buyer's realtor for a nice couple that really wants the property. We're just getting to the "selecting finishes" stage and would love their input, but not before we have it under contract and their realtor seems to be dragging out the process.
PS - we don't have a "seller's realtors" and don't plan to. We usually handle all the paperwork with our lawyer and the buyers themselves.

Quote from @Larry Turowski:

Quote from @Mike Flynn:

Quote from @Dan DiFilippo:

@Mike Flynn so essentially, you want the seller to perform in such a way that the agent will not get paid for the work they did preparing and marketing the property, potentially including paying for staging and photography.

If it's not unethical, it's just downright reprehensible.

I wonder what you do for a living.

Hey Dan. Not sure how your rude post contributes to this discussion... I didn't claim I wanted to screw over the realtor. I just wanted to know if they get paid regardless, or if there's way to negotiate that fee or something. This is a hypothetical discussion because I'm trying to learn what happens in this situation if I were to pursue it. 

 This is a good example of how real estate agents sometimes have their own interests in mind more than their clients. Yes, the listing agent should get paid--IF they get the house sold. I've bought a number of listed properties where sellers have contacted me and I've told them to let me know when the listing is expired.

Great info, Larry! Thanks!

Quote from @Quintin “Q” Grant:

Honestly this can get very tricky dealing with properties on the MLS. Most agent/client contracts are exclusive meaning the broker gets paid even if the seller finds their own buyer. Unless seller financing or the like is specified on the listing the agent will more than likely advise their client not to take such a offer. I'm not sure if someone else on the post mentioned this, but What you can do is get a list of expired listings and market to these sellers and make creative financing offers to them because you know they want to sell and depending on the situation might be pretty desperate to sell.

Thanks Quintin! Yeah I think someone mentioned that earlier but I like it. Can you find the expired listing owners on a site like listsource.com (or similar) or does it have to be like an MLS search?

Quote from @Dan DiFilippo:

@Mike Flynn so essentially, you want the seller to perform in such a way that the agent will not get paid for the work they did preparing and marketing the property, potentially including paying for staging and photography.

If it's not unethical, it's just downright reprehensible.

I wonder what you do for a living.

Hey Dan. Not sure how your rude post contributes to this discussion... I didn't claim I wanted to screw over the realtor. I just wanted to know if they get paid regardless, or if there's way to negotiate that fee or something. This is a hypothetical discussion because I'm trying to learn what happens in this situation if I were to pursue it. 

Nice, I didn't know you could search for seller financing interest on the MLS. I don't have access, but I work with a great realtor consistently that could check that our for me. And I understand that most sellers don't want to finance or consider sub-to's and all that, but I want to keep it in my tool belt for when I'm talking with sellers. It seems like a great go-to to start with because there's not much flexibility with banks and I don't have capital to always put 20%-30% down on a property. We also want to scale much quicker than we have been.

Quote from @Jay Hinrichs:

Quote from @Mike Flynn:

That was kind of the vibe I was getting from talking with a few people, but wanted to throw it out to this community to see what people's experiences were. Is there a time frame where that exclusivity expires? Or is just on-going? Like if they took it off the market today and sold it to me 6 months from now? 1 year from now? Just curious if you or anyone know. 

Thanks Sergey!

 you wnat to just troll the expired listings on mls if you have a way to get to them.. those U can go after without the seller being obligated to pay a commish.. most listing agreements have a trail feature IE if the listing was a procuring cause to the sale the seller is still obligated to pay commish for an additional 90 days after the listing was cancelled something of that nature. 

SO just troll the FSBO and expired listings.. we can all get fired up on sub too this method has been used for decades its nothing new or earth shattering.. it works best when markets are soft or depressed.. or with sellers in trouble and have very little equity.. there is a lot more to those deals than the hyperbole though.

Thanks Jay! I'll look into that trail clause. I've been looking at the FSBO listings a lot but didn't think about the expired ones.

More good points.

The idea is that the realtor isn't involved in any way. I'd like to negotiate directly with the seller and not through a realtor since I'm looking to be creative with financing strategies and the realtor may not understand or communicate those strategies properly with the seller. Plus, creative financing is problem solving, and I can't problem solve very well if I'm not IN the conversation with the seller. 

It may just not be something that's possible, and that's alright. I may have to just find these deals off the MLS. I just wanted to ask BP to see if anyone had experience with doing something like this and see how they got around a realtor, because I've seen a few properties on the MLS that have been there a long time and thought they could be decent opportunities. And maybe the properties would still work with the agent fee calculated in, but it's harder to do creative financing with that fee because the seller has to pay that which would mean they would want a decent amount of money from me upfront when I'm trying to put as little (if any) into the deal up front and focus on seller financing, sub-to, or a lease option.

That was kind of the vibe I was getting from talking with a few people, but wanted to throw it out to this community to see what people's experiences were. Is there a time frame where that exclusivity expires? Or is just on-going? Like if they took it off the market today and sold it to me 6 months from now? 1 year from now? Just curious if you or anyone know. 

Thanks Sergey!

Hey Matt,

I believe when Bob mentioned servicing company, he was talking about a company you hire that collects and distributes the monthly payment, and deals with all the documentation and recording of payments, as well as any notices for late payments, etc. Basically a middle man for your private loan that handles all the stuff you don't want to handle, but really need to have. I've heard it ranges a little, but is somewhere around $20/mo. Listen to BP Podcast #527 - they talk about seller financing/loan servicing a little and that might make more clear than I can. Plus it's just a really informative episode. Personally, I would jump on the opportunity to do 0% rate and pay a little higher sale price (assuming the numbers worked like you said) - it's actually what I'm currently on the hunt for. 

Good post and good luck with the property!

I've been looking a lot more into creative financing (like seller financing, subject-to, and lease options), but was curious how you'd go about that with a property listed on the MLS through an agent/broker. Let's say a property is listed for a very long time and you wanted to get creative with the seller to buy their property. Do you have to use the realtor that listed the property? Or more specifically, does that agent have a contractual obligation to be paid? Is it possible to have the seller take the property off the market and do the sale transaction between the two of us? I'd love to hear if anyone has had any experience with this! I just recently found the Pace Morby episode (#527) that totally blew my mind with creative financing, but now I have a lot of very specific questions around a lot of the options.

Thanks!!