Selling Your Home? Offer Concessions Instead of Lowering the Price

Selling Your Home?  Offer Concessions Instead of Lowering the Price

Lowering the asking price on your home isn't the solution to making it stand out in today's crowded housing market.  According to the National Association of Realtors, there is nearly a nine-month supply of homes for sale on the market.

How will you make your home stand out among all those other ‘For Sale' signs?

One way experts say to stand out instead of slashing the asking price is to propose lowering the rate on a potential buyer's mortgage by providing seller financing incentives.

Consider this example showing the difference in cost and savings for lowering a home's price vs. offering seller concessions.  In the case of lowering price, a motivated seller might reduce their $250,000 asking price by 5% or $12,500.  For less money, the seller could pay up to three discount points on the buyer's mortgage, lowering the buyer's interest rate and monthly mortgage payment.  A discount point is considered 1/100 of the buyer's loan amount - about $2,500 per point in this example.

The math is simple. Seller concessions cost the seller $7,500 in this example (vs. $12,500 to lower the price of the home 5%) and the deal is actually more enticing for the buyer.  At today's 30-year fixed rate, three points off a mortgage rate can potentially save a buyer more than $30,000 in mortgage payments over the life of the loan!  And, points paid through seller concessions may even be tax deductible.

By offering a concession to lower the interest rate, the seller makes their home more affordable, without dropping their price.  This gets them to the closing table sooner.  The buyer actually may save more in reduced interest over the life of the loan than they would have via a lower home price, depending on the rate and terms of their mortgage.

Other examples of seller concessions that buyers can offer include paying some or all of the buyer's closing costs, and providing an allowance for the buyer to landscape or make improvements to the home.

Seller concessions can be an inexpensive and innovative way to move a house in a slow market.  Both the buyer and seller may benefit from such seller concessions.