Our clients were two years into a relentless search on Dataw Island for a waterfront, one level home. They made a hard decision one evening and relayed to us they were giving up. Although Dataw was their dream, they were disheartened they could not find a home that excited them. They loved their current home & were going to remain thankful for it … even if it wasn’t in their desired location.
A few weeks passed and at 06:00 on a Sunday morning 757 Island Circle E on Dataw Island hit the Lowcountry Regional MLS. We promptly sent it over, acknowledged their decision to discontinue their search, but explained we would be remiss to not share this exceptional listing. Lo and behold, they were already sipping coffee and viewing the very same home on Zillow.
We scheduled a showing & it was love at first sight! The home had great bones, but it needed quite a bit of work to be perfect for our clients. After diving into the financial aspects of buying another home, they decided it made better sense to leave their investments in place, sell their current home first, and then close on 757 Island Circle East with the proceeds.
It was a tough market to get an offer accepted contingent upon the sale of a home. We dangled a carrot and wrote the first offer for $100k over asking price, in hopes it would negate our contingency. The sellers would not accept a sale of home contingency … no matter what the carrot looked like. We rolled up our sleeves and the real negotiating began.
Our clients were willing to take a serious hit on their investments and use their funds to purchase this home. We then removed the home sale contingency, reduced our price, lengthened the closing to 60 days and the offer was accepted.
We thrive on a well-earned “Atta ‘girl”, so when our client said, “Ladies, I know I made the final decision, but please don’t let us down … We have a lot of money on the line here,” off to the races we went!
We made it our mission to sell their home within the deadline, preserving their investments. Our challenge: selling a waterfront home priced well over $1 million within 60 days—in January, typically the worst time to list a home in our area.
We immediately put the home on Coming Soon/Delayed Listing status in the Lowcountry Regional MLS and scheduled photography. Within 6 days their home hit the market as an Active Listing on the MLS and a broker’s open house was scheduled for the following week.
Now the real work began … how do we get agents to come to a broker’s open house in January when it is 40 degrees outside and raining every day? By dividing and conquering of course! Anna jumped on marketing, while Karen jumped on strategic paperwork!
Anna created a virtual invitation and personally texted and called over 200 agents to come to the event. She also launched a social media campaign and even hired a caterer. Meanwhile, Karen dug into every upgrade the owners had completed (they kept fantastic records). She put her hands on every receipt and every note from every maintenance visit. She gathered the Flood Zone Determination, the current and a new Flood Policy, Elevation Certificate, Survey, Home Expenses, Septic Inspection & vendor contact information for home maintenance. Basically, EVERYTHING a Buyer’s Agent would need and want to know about the home was uploaded into the MLS. We were on a time crunch and needed to equip potential buyers with a crystal-clear picture of what they were buying!
This strategy worked too well as we had a showing request before the Broker’s Open House. They wrote a clean & near full price offer under one condition … we cancel the Broker’s Open House. Karen buttoned up the paperwork and Anna had to get busy uninviting 200 people from the party. We closed in less than 30 days and negotiated a month rent back situation to give our clients time to move. Not only did we hit our desired deadline, but we broke a record by over $200k in that neighborhood and by over $100 per square foot!
About once a month we are honored to receive pictures of their GLORIOUS views, accompanied with notes of thanks for the work we did. We have also been known to sit with our new friends enjoying their sunset and a glass of champagne. They seem to always manage a “pinch me, is this real” and we raise a victory toast.
