A Friend InDEED

We’re aware that there are times when a prospected home-buyer learns that someone they know- a friend or family member- is preparing to sell a house. And so the question becomes, “Why can’t I just buy a house from my friend or family member? This will save us both money.” On the surface this doesn’t sound like a bad idea, and we would sound completely self-serving if we said that everybody all the time had to buy with a professional real estate brokerage. Sometimes that isn’t the case. That being said, there are three big things to consider before going down this particular road.

The first danger is getting personal feelings involved in real estate transactions, and there are two ways this can happen. One, a transaction could go bad. There could be some situation or issue come up that could cause hard feelings between you and your friend or family member for years to come. Nobody wants to lose a friend over a real estate transaction. The other way that this may cause a potential issue is if you made a bad real estate decision, or found yourself doing something that really wasn’t in your interest to spare the feelings of your friend or family member to avoid those hard feelings being created.

Secondly, there are issues that come up in a real estate transaction that most consumers don’t have the experience or knowledge to fix themselves. Shared driveway agreements, shared well agreements, title policy problems- all of these things are problems that real estate agents work with on almost a daily basis. So when they come up, it’s dealt with more smoothly by them. Also, a buyer and seller that are not real estate licensees might find themselves in a situation that they may not know how to get out of.

Finally, even before problems appear, there may be warning signs that a trained real estate agent knows to look for, or thinks to themselves, “I can take care of this now and save everybody a whole lot of time later.” Many times, with buyers and sellers themselves, they don’t see those warning signs, and then they’ve got problems.

So in conclusion, some people don’t need real estate agents involved in order to buy from a friend or family member. Most people do. In most real estate transactions, especially where financing is involved, you need someone who is familiar with all the various issues that can come up, look for the danger signs, fix them before they become a real problem, and someone who may act as an advocate for you, whatever the case may be.

For more information about buying your first home, visit us at www.springfieldfirsthome.com. Or call/text us at 417.872.9222.