These questions will help you find the perfect buyer to work with.
If you’re planning to help someone buy a home, it’s important to properly vet them to make sure the deal won’t fall apart down the road. Essentially, you’re looking at the buyer’s ability to purchase a house as well as their commitment to doing so. If you discover they’re not ready, willing, and able to buy a home, you shouldn’t work with them. It’s perfectly ethical to deny a buyer based on these requirements, but you should not discriminate based on items covered in Article 10 in the Realtor Code of Ethics.
There’s a series of questions you can use to ensure you don’t do anything unethical or illegal. These include:
- Ask what their plan is if they can’t find a home.
- Find out if they’ve been pre-approved. If they have, find out who pre-approved them.
- Ask if you can get another lender involved (it’s not a bad idea to get another quote).
- Ask about their budget and how much extra cash they have.
- Ask how long they’ve been looking.
- Ask if they’ve seen any properties.
- Ask if they’re working with another Realtor and if they’ve signed a buyer’s agency agreement.
- Ask if they must sell a home, end a lease, or have any other contingencies before buying a house.
- Ask how soon they want to move and what their perfect move-in date would be.
- Ask if they could make an offer and move in within a month.
- Ask if anyone else will be helping with any aspect of their buying decision.
- Ask when they can view properties and when you can contact them.
- Ask if they’ve ever purchased a home before.
All of these questions can help give you a better idea of what kind of buyer you may be working with. Hopefully, taking the time to ask them will allow you to separate the tire-kickers from the ready, willing, and able buyers. In the meantime, if you’d like more information about vetting buyers or have any other questions, feel free to reach out to me. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
