The Power of a Personal Letter

Maybe you have been searching for a house in Winnipeg, or other cities in the past few months and have come across the dreaded BIDDING WAR!  I know, I know if you are a buyer, or a buyer’s agent then you know the heartbreak that can come with losing the home of your dreams to a closed offer bidding war.  I spend a lot of my time working as a Buyer’s agent, and I am not a fan of the offer date/bidding war system.  But hey, that’s the market we are currently in so instead of getting frustrated and hating on the system let me offer you another option that you may think is silly.  THE PERSONAL LETTER!!

Yes I really do mean a personal letter.  And when I say personal I don’t mean something addressed to “the owner of blah blah blah” I mean a personal letter.  “Dear Kim and Dave, (fake names BTW) thank you for considering our offer to purchase your home at 123 Fake street”.  Keep in mind this is just an intro but doesn’t that sound nice? Wouldn’t you have liked to read something along those lines instead of just the offer to purchase form filled out by some random person? I kid you not a personal letter is a very powerful tool when purchasing a home.  Now I will say that this is a very specific case when the personal letter is useful.  If you are trying to get the best deal on a home and are offering below list price, then this is not the situation for you.  If you are in a competing offer situation and it is the home you love, the one you can’t live without, then this could seriously help your potential purchase of your dream home.

Let me tell you a story about a couple I recently helped purchase their first home.  We saw a house that was in their ideal location, in their budget and was truly the perfect home for them to grow and start their life together as homeowners in.  We did a pre-inspection knowing that there was an offer date and we did all the research to understand where it may sell for and if they could fit it into their budget.  We knew that it would be a bidding war, the traffic through was crazy and the house was great.  We spoke about writing a personal letter to the vendor and my clients went for it and knocked it out of the park.  They purchases special paper that had a gold filigree and flower pattern and hand wrote it as careful as they could.  The letter was amazing, honestly I knew how much they loved the house and how perfect it was for them but their letter said it in a way that I couldn’t even convey to the listing agent or owner.  It was truly moving, because everything they wrote was true and heartfelt. 

On offer date we knew it would still be tough because we were maxing out their budget and it still may sell for over that price, and unfortunately it did.  I still had to make the heart-wrenching call that they did not get the house, they were taking an offer for a higher dollar value.  We were all crushed.  Honestly, I felt in my bones that their offer would be accepted everything just felt right.  A few days later I received a call from the listing agent and when I answered the agent told me that the other offer, while being higher, was taking too long to get financing in place and it looked like they would need extra time.  The agent then told me that the vendor wasn’t happy with that outcome and had really been touched by my clients offer.  The vendor wanted to let the first offer lapse as they had their chance to close and didn’t, and come back to my clients because the letter they wrote had literally touched her heart.  In the end they did come back to us and we closed our offer in a couple of days. My clients are now in that house, making it their home and loving every minute of it.

The moral here is not that writing a personal letter will get you the house of your dreams, but if you actually put your heart into a personal letter when competing with other offers you will stand out!  A vendor is much more likely to want to sell their home to someone who has a personal connection with their home.  A personal letter can tell the vendor how much the home means to you, your family and how much you will appreciate and love it in the years to come.

Best of luck out there!

#AgentLogan

Logan Queen

Tel: (204) 226-1261
Email: Logan@JenniferQueen.com