Today, we’re going to talk about that elephant in the room right now: the booming real estate market.
It is unbelievable! We haven’t seen this since 2004-2005. It is really booming out there. I have been closing properties since the late 90’s, since I started back in Palos Hills with John Griffin all those years ago. While our office now does focus on estate planning, we do real estate closings for our estate planning clients, so there is a vast vat of knowledge there!
And recently, I decided to take that knowledge with my sister, Bridget Gricus, to Palos Park Life. Bridget is a real estate broker, and we created an article called “Property Sisters.” We now publish an article in the magazine every month, we bring tools, tips and advice on finding property, purchasing property, closing property, and all the secret hints that those who have been working many years in the industry know.
Today, I am going to tell you about those real estate closings and how to minimize any stress. We frequently have clients who feel stressed and nervous and hopeless about their real estate closings, but it does not have to be this way. From the very beginning, get yourself a good, experienced real estate broker and attorney. They can take all the stress away from you and get things in place early.
Real estate brokers will tell you the best time to look for certain things. They know this because they’ve been doing this a long time. So get those good professionals in place, then they will refer you to all the other trusted professionals you’re going to need such as an appraiser, home inspector, title company, lender. When you have the basic foundation of your broker and attorney, they’re going to bring their trusted colleagues into this process to make it go as smoothly as possible.
When you have them in place, you can let them do all the work! Yes, there are going to be issues that come up. Home inspections often serve as some kind of lovefest between the buyer and seller. The buyer sees all the glistening inspections and thinks, “Oh my God, I thought we were buying a castle but we’re really buying this terrible home that needs everything fixed,” and the seller thinks, “That is our castle and now you’re here telling us there’s tons of things wrong with it?” That’s very natural. We know how to negotiate that. I have done thousands of closings; they do not fall apart over a home inspection issue, so there’s no need for either the buyer or the seller to get upset over that.
Keep a big open mind, be prepared to compromise a little on a tax credit here, on an inspection issue there.
Focus on the big picture and let us worry about all that little stuff; we can work it out.
Opposing attorneys on each side can work out all the issues. The title company when the title comes – are we going to find some issues there? Of course, we may. There may be a violation the seller didn’t know about. All of those things are commonplace. We know how to navigate you through it.
You really should not have to worry about any of these things at all. Leave it in the hands of those who are helping you, who you’re paying to get you through this, so you just focus on what you need to be thinking about.
Of course there are so many things when you’re buying or selling that you need to be able to take care of. Leave the closing business with those who do it all the time. When that happens, then we can keep the lovefest, it can be a win-win situation and you keep your focus on the big, exciting life change that this real estate closing represents.
Have an open mind, see the big picture, get a terrific-experienced broker and attorney, and they’ll bring all the other parties on board. You will not have to be losing sleep or getting stress medication. Yes, it’s true what they say: Real estate closings are up there with death and divorce as the most stressful things in life, but I promise you, it doesn’t have to be. It can be interesting and exciting as it should be. Just make sure you follow those little gems of advice.
I am going to leave you now with a quote, getting nostalgic from the amazing series, Madmen, that many of you watched years ago. There was a lot of sexism in it but there were gems, too, and I love how the characters evolved. Don Draper once described nostalgia as “delicate, but potent, like the pain from an old wound, a twinge far more powerful than memory alone, taking us to a place we ache to go again, home again, a place where we know are loved.”
That’s what I wish for your home, be it one you’ve been in for a long time or one you’re just out there searching for, or just about to close on.
View the video replay from Friday 6/18/21 The Elephant in the Room (the booming real estate market)
