Our Deal of The Month is a story of never giving up.

Our story starts Spring 2022. Our seller had just walked away from countersigning a contract. I mean, it was THIS CLOSE!

• We had marketed the unit for months and had a number of interested buyers
• We had ironed out all the terms of the sale to this buyer
• The buyer had even signed his side of the contract
• We were just waiting for our client to sign…

Nothing was wrong, exactly. The price was good ($1.425mm). The terms were acceptable. Problem was that our seller had nowhere to go!

• No inventory in the suburbs
• No inventory in the city
• Not even a good rental apartment to go to

So the seller took his property off the market, apologizing profusely. He promised that we would have our second chance. The buyer was frustrated, and moved into a rental. He couldn’t have been nicer about it. More about that in a second.

Six Months Later

Fast forward to October, six months later. It was the end of 2022, and we were in touch with our client on and off. I called him to see what was going on. My timing couldn’t have been better:

• The sellers had another child
• They were running low on space; their 2bed was shrinking
• A rental unit came to market in their building, at a good price

The planets lined up. So as we readied to bring the apartment, we reached out to everyone who had come through before. Jonathan from our team even called the agent for the last buyer, who had just had his heart broken, remember?

Guess what? That buyer was still in love with the unit! The only issue this time? He would have to break his lease and spend a little money doing so. But what’s $10,000 among friends? The lease was up at the end of May, but this buyer was willing to eat 3 months of rent.

How often does it happen when the one that got away didn’t get away?

So, seven months after our last deal fell apart, we had a deal in place to sell the same apartment to the same buyer, at the same price.

As our closing approached, our seller, too, was carrying this empty apartment, having already moved into his new rental and getting his kids settled. He asked us, “What would it take to get the closing to move from March into February?”

Jonathan had a creative idea: Would this buyer eat another month of his own rental if the seller gave him a $5000 credit? If you think about it, even if the credit covered the cost to carry the unit for that month for the seller, it would be a win. But what if he could make even $2000-3000 in interest on his equity in his property for that month? Think about it. If he has $500,000 locked in the apartment, and he can earn even 1/2 a percent in a month, that would be $2500 in his pocket…

And even if he was just going to earn next to nothing, he seller was more than ready to get the apartment off his books, just to ensure no new problems got in the way of the closing (and believe me, it happens!). And two weeks ago, we officially closed. Bravo to Jonathan for his hard work getting this sold, and for only $5000 less than our original price- by design!