How To Qualify & Prepare A Buyer In 2021

A mentor of mine always said that it was better to know to lose a buyer on Tuesday instead of them not buying and dragging you around and not buying on Saturday. In the buyer charged market the ability to qualify, educate and empower a buyer is a critical skill for the buyer agent and their buyers success. This week we want to look at the new and improved buyer qualifying process that will help you win and your buyer win in this crazy buyer market. Let’s assume we have converted our buyer to a meeting on zoom and here are the steps we can take next with our session.

Step 1 – The FORD technique– ask them about their Family, Occupation, Recreation and Dreams in order for you to build their trust, likability, connection and for you both to discover commonalities.

Step 2 – The Safe Island ( always let them know up front what will be talking about and what will happen before it happens to really make them relax.

Step 3 – Educate them on the market by showing them stats, graphs and of sales activity for buyers already purchased in their property search criteria so they are prepared and see others paying well over the asking prices and not just them.

Step 4 – Review the appropriate agency forms like DORTS, PRIVACY, FINTRAC, and provide them with a blank contract of purchase and sale to review on their own time in advance of making an offer.

Step 5 – Ask them pre planned open ended questions – Who, what, where, when, why, how (cash or credit) ? Then….Who? If they say credit.

Step 6 – Having our financial house in order to compete. Meaning we have a lender that is providing us with a physical approval letter. Willing to take a reference phone call on our behalf from seller or seller’s agent during presentation of offers. Give us the ability to make a cash offer. I then ask their permission to call my financial person and set appointment with them to ensure this all happens for them.

Step 7 – Conditional or Subject Free Offer conversation with the buyers and risk and reward for each situation.

Step 8 – Deposits discussion whether the deposit goes with the offer right up front and send a photo of the deposit to give you some leverage with your offers.

Step 9 – The appraisal dilemma and if the appraisal comes up lower than the purchase price and what would we do then.

Step 10 -  Bully showing strategies on properties with tenants or sellers making it difficult to get in to viewing the property.

Step 11 - Bully or Pre-Emptive offer strategy and try to avoid the multiple offer situation and we keep re submitting offers until we get response from the seller and their agent or our budget runs out.

Step 12 – The Multiple Strategies you will be using to compete in the multiple offer situation and what are you willing to do to compete against the other bids.

Step 13 – Paying for the property inspection to be done during viewing appointment to avoid the contingency of a home inspection condition in the offer.

Step 14 – The Escalation, Preferential offer clause ( contractually not enforceable ) Starting purchase price included and add following term….“The purchase price is $10,000 above the price offered in the nearest competing bona fide offer acceptable to the seller. Upon acceptance of this offer, the seller will provide a copy of page 1 of the competing offer with the names struck out or removed for privacy purposes.” Contact listing agent and advise them of the term and ask them just to stroke out the above term and counter at the appropriate purchase price and give you and your buyer 5 minutes to respond to their counter offer price. We accept or decline and the seller returns quickly to the next highest offer.

Step 15 – You create and find versus sit and wait for a listing plan in place to find off market properties for the buyers.

Step 16 – Closing questions - Maybe this isn’t the right market for us? Maybe now is not the right time for you? How do we play the game? What would you be willing to do to buy in this market and compete?

Step 17 – You the agent sign off on your bully offer, multiple offer, finding off market property plan and escalation clause strategy and then ask them to sign off in return a buyers agreement.

So there you have it a step by step informative, strategic process to identify your quality of buyer and know what your chances of competing in this market will be for them and you. Then you make a decision whether to move forward or to wait until the market winds change. Feel free to share any steps or strategies that you may want to add to the process with myself and the rest of our readers!

Strength and courage,
Wade