98.3% of the asking price.
This was an exciting sale. The sellers had been trying to sell the home for a year and struggled. The reason the house wasn’t selling was not because of the price. (The cottage was absolutely worth what the sellers were asking for.) But there was a minor complication. The neighborhood where the home was located was considering some significant upgrades. They considered assessing everyone in the neighborhood for $7,000 to $8,000 each to cover the cost. The buyers would look at the house and get cold feet because of the pending assessment. Most buyers would say, “I’ll buy your house, but I want an $8,000 discount on the price because of the special assessment.” The sellers would reply, “I’m glad to sell you my house, but I am not going to discount $8,000 because we think the special assessment is not going to go through.” The sellers told me about the problem when I bought the home. I thought about it for a few minutes and proposed a solution. Here’s what I told them: “Let’s sell the house and agree to hold $8,000 in escrow. If the special assessment goes through within a year, the buyers get that $8,000. If it does not go through within a year, the $8,000 goes to you.” We all agreed that that sounded like a good idea. The home sold very fast for 98.3% of the asking price. The $8,000 was put into escrow, and an attorney signed the agreement. It turned out that the sellers were correct. The opposition in the neighborhood was strong, and the special assessment never went through.
A year later, the sellers received the $8,000 put into escrow. This
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