If you have a home to sell, and you’re fortunate enough to receive multiple offers, there are certain factors other than the offered prices that might help make your decision who to sell to. This U.S. News article from Teresa Mears highlights how home sellers are considering buyers who take the time to write a personal letter, for a more emotional appeal.
In the competitive market for a home that exists in many parts of the country, more buyers are embracing a novel tool: adding to their offers a heartfelt letter and a family photo in hopes of swaying the seller to choose their bid.
These days it’s not only rare for the buyer and seller to meet during the homebuying process, but the buyer’s agent and listing agent may never meet, doing all their interactions via text message and email. That can make the buyer’s letter the only biographical information the seller receives.
“It does help humanize the buyer in the seller’s eyes,” says Victor Quiroz, an agent with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties in the Southern California town of Cerritos. An effective letter is likely to include the buyers’ professions, the ages of their children and a nice family photo. “It doesn’t always work, but it does help a little bit.”
For sellers, the letters add another factor to evaluate when weighing competing offers. But, agents say, letters can be persuasive because sellers are often emotional about selling their homes, particularly houses in which they have raised families.
“Every seller is different, and they’re selling for a different reason,” Quiroz says. “Sometimes sellers make decisions not based on financial issues. Sometimes they make decisions for emotional reasons. … I’m actually seeing sellers accept less money and turn down fast closings because they resonated with the buyers.”
In markets where multiple offers are common, such as San Francisco and Seattle, families seeking to buy a home with a mortgage are competing with investors offering all cash and a quick closing. If a seller isn’t in a hurry, and the net proceeds will be the same, a connection with a prospective buyer can influence the seller to accept a longer closing time and a bit more uncertainty.
But the most heartfelt letter can’t trump the two most important factors in any real estate transactions: price and terms.
“If those two things don’t make sense for the seller, then the emotional appeal won’t matter,” Quiroz says.
However, Klaus Gosma, a Redfin agent in Seattle, says he’s participated in several transactions where sellers chose a buyer who wrote a personal letter over an offer of slightly more money. “They wanted it to go to someone who was going to be a good steward of the home going forward,” he says of sellers who rejected an all-cash developer’s offer for their childhood home in favor of a family who planned to live there.
While an all-cash offer from an investor with a quick closing may appear to be a sure thing, sometimes an offer with a mortgage contingency from a buyer who loves the house is actually stronger, McClelland says.
“To experience that emotional connection to the home is important for the seller,” McClelland says. “This person is not going to give up on this purchase if a number shifts to the right or the left. … These are the ones that will have a smoother transaction,” he says. “There is a monetary value to that.”
