Sellers can Help Buyers with Mortgage

Jan 17th, 2008 @ 9:11 AM by MortgageMentor

In today’s somewhat slow housing market, sellers are wondering whether they will have to sit on their property forever before it sells. The answer is, you don’t have to. A property will sell if it is priced at an attractive value to a buyer – and it will most likely sell quickly if you offer an incentive.

After all, developers do it all the time. They are able to actually save money in the long run, because they do not have to hang onto finished, empty properties so long. Consider following their example. If you would like to get your property sold quickly, consider paying part of the price for buyers. You could pay interest in the form of a buy-down. A buy-down can work in one of several ways, but generally the interest rate will be lowered at the beginning of the loan; say, 4.5 percent the first year, then 5.5, then the rate goes up to 6.5 in the third year for the rest of the loan term. Offering to pay the first year or two of interest might only cost you a few thousand dollars, but would save the buyer a great deal – up to 30 percent – on their monthly mortgage payment.

You could also pay a small amount of the mortgage, say two percent, to lower the interest rate for the buyer. This would save them over the entire life of the loan – on a $300,000 mortgage, the buyer would realize nearly $40,000 in savings.

These are just a couple of ways to help get your property to move, without lowering your sales price. Next week we’ll look at more ways to assist buyers in seeing that your property is the best one to purchase.