You don't have to bring me a deal. Bring me a question. A listing that won't move. A seller whose numbers don't add up. Or the traditional way just isn't working.
If I can help, I will. If I can't, I'll tell you fast. Either way it costs you nothing. Just add me as the tool guy.
Over the years I've watched agents lose commissions on listings that were never going to close. These five questions are the ones that would have caught it.
I talk with agents every day, and the same five questions keep deciding whether a listing ever closes, which means whether you ever get paid on it. Skip them and you don't avoid the problem, you just delay it. The seller behind on payments, the second lien, the HELOC they forgot about: none of it disappears. It waits. It surfaces during the title search, after the home is finally under contract, sometimes on day 170. By then the seller either brings money to closing or the whole thing falls apart, and your commission goes with it.
Two agents I talked to this year had been carrying a listing for months. Photos, open houses, price cuts. In both cases the seller was badly behind on the mortgage, one of them by tens of thousands. Neither agent knew. Not because they were hiding anything. Because nobody had ever told them to ask.
Five questions, the exact wording for the one that feels rude to ask, and the math that tells you in ninety seconds whether this listing can close and pay you, or quietly waste six months of your time.
Read the five questionsYou get paid. Full commission, that's the goal on every deal, including a cash purchase. I'm not trying to save a few points by squeezing the agent who brought it to me. I'd rather have an agent who sends me three more deals than win one negotiation against you.
Your seller nets the most I can get them. I take care of closing costs and fees where I can, because the number that matters is what your seller walks away with, not what the contract says on top. If I can move that number up, I will.
I close the ones a bank won't touch. The dead HVAC, the aging roof, the seller who's behind: those are the deals financed buyers walk away from, and they're the exact deals I'm built for. When your traditional buyer pool can't fund it, I'm still standing there ready to close.
You know the house. You walk it once and the smell's in your shoes for the rest of the day, and you never want to go back. You don't have to. Call Robert.
I bring the structure the deal actually needs. Cash when it works. Terms when the seller's situation calls for it. You don't have to know which one fits, that's my job. You just bring me the situation and I'll tell you what's possible.
And you get a straight answer, fast. Yes, no, or here's exactly what I'd need. Within a day. A no is a real answer, and you'll get it before it costs you another month.
Somebody called asking if your seller would do creative. No proof of funds, no closed deals, no straight answer when you asked what happens to your commission. You said no. That was the right call.
The word got worn out by people who learned it on YouTube last week and started dialing. So let me not use it. Here's the plain version.
Terms just means the seller gets paid over time instead of all at once. The seller becomes the bank.
The seller carries the note, and I make the payments to them over time.
The existing loan stays right where it is, and I take over the payments on it.
Both at once. Say they owe $250k and we agree on $400k. I take over the existing $250k loan subject-to, and the seller carries the $150k of equity on top, I make payments to them on that. Two structures, one deal.
That's the whole thing. No loophole, no workaround. It's been sitting in the standard contracts the entire time.
It isn't right for every seller. It's right for the ones where cash leaves money on the table, or where cash can't clear what they owe.
Send me an address and the first thing I run is a cash number. Fast close, no financing contingency, no appraisal risk. If cash solves it, we're done, and that's the outcome I want, because it's the simplest one for everybody.
When cash can't get there, I'll show you what a terms offer would look like on that same house. Not instead of the cash number, alongside it. Two numbers, so you and your seller can see both and pick.
You might look at it and pass. Your seller might pass. That's a real answer and it costs you nothing to have heard it. And if it's not right today, it doesn't expire, plenty of these come back around in a few months when the listing's about to run out and the picture has changed.
I'm not trying to talk anyone into a structure. I'm trying to make sure your seller knows the door was there.
A cash offer is a number. A terms offer is a structure, down payment, monthly, length, what happens at the end. Every one of those pieces gets shaped around what your seller actually needs: move-out timing, what they owe, whether they want money now or money over time, what they're trying to walk away from.
I'm not going to send you a blind terms offer built off a listing sheet. That's not a real offer, it's a guess, and your seller will read it that way. I'd rather get on a call, hear the situation directly, and build something shaped around it.
You, me, and your seller. You stay the professional in the room, it's your client and your relationship. I'm there to ask the questions that shape the structure, and to explain what we can actually do so you don't have to carry that part alone. Fifteen minutes usually does it. What comes out of that call is an offer built around your seller, not around a template.
Not theory. I walk them through an actual property I bought this way, what we did, what the seller got, what happened afterward. People believe a story about someone like them. They don't believe a diagram.
Most sellers in a bad spot have not had one person actually ask what's going on. I'll take three calls if that's what it takes. On the last one it did. That's not patience, it's the job.
Here's a fear I've heard and it's a fair one: if this turns into an ongoing relationship, seller financing, a note, payments over time, am I going to be the one getting phone calls about it for the next five years?
No. The seller calls me. I own a seller-financed property in Palm Coast right now, and when those sellers want to talk about the terms, they text me directly. Not the agent. That relationship is mine to carry, and I carry it.
You close the sale, you get paid, and you get your Saturdays back.
It's the first thing every agent thinks, and nobody wants to be the one to ask it out loud. So let me answer it before you have to.
Pull up a HUD-1 Settlement Statement. The federal closing form. Go to the borrower's column, Section 200.
Line 203. Existing loan(s) taken subject to.
It's on the seller's side too, line 503. It's been on that form for decades, and it means exactly what it says: the buyer takes the property while the seller's existing loan stays in place. The federal government printed a line for it. It closes like any other sale, through a title company, or a closing attorney if you're in an attorney state like North Carolina. It is an ordinary conveyance with its own paperwork, not a workaround someone invented on YouTube.
That doesn't mean every subject-to deal is a good one, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. The loan stays in the seller's name, and a buyer with no reserves and no servicer can wreck someone's credit. Those are real risks and your seller deserves to hear them from someone. I'd rather it be me, on a call, with you listening, and I put every one of them in writing on the page I wrote for homeowners, including exactly what to demand from a buyer like me.
Legal isn't the same as safe. Both things are true, and an agent should be told both.
Here's what usually happens. An agent asks their broker, and the broker says "we don't do that." The agent hears a legal ruling. It wasn't one.
"I've never done one" and "it isn't allowed" are completely different sentences, and they get collapsed into each other constantly. Your broker may be telling you the honest truth about their own experience. That's not the same as telling you what the law permits.
So go around all of us. Ask a real estate attorney, and make it one who actually closes these. Some attorneys don't handle them, and that's fine, but it makes them the wrong person for the question, not an authority on it. There are attorneys who have closed thousands of these over thirty-year careers. There are mortgage brokers who structure around them every week. Those are the people whose answer means something.
If you want an introduction to someone who does this daily, ask me and I'll make it. Then go verify what they tell you independently. I'd rather you check me than trust me.
And to be clear about my own lane: I don't draft legal documents. Attorneys do. A transaction coordinator handles the paperwork. I'm the buyer, not the paperwork, and anyone in this business who tells you they'll handle the legal side themselves has just told you something important about them.
You know your market and your seller better than I ever will. This is the part I bring.
Seller is months behind and the payoff has swallowed the equity. A conventional buyer cannot fix that at any price. I can bring the loan current and take over the payments.
Dead HVAC, end-of-life roof, old panel, unpermitted work. No insurer binds it, so no lender funds it, so your financed buyer pool is zero no matter what the listing says. I don't need an appraisal.
When a seller doesn't need every dollar on closing day, a terms structure takes commission, repairs and holding costs out of the math, which means the number can go up. Nobody can promise full price. But it beats a cash offer more often than agents expect.
Agents ask me all the time: send me your offer. And I won't, not because I'm being cagey, but because an offer without the situation is a guess. And when I've pushed back and asked what's actually going on, the honest answer is usually that the agent doesn't know either. Not their fault. Nobody taught them to ask.
There's a second reason, and it matters more. A seller-financing offer that lands cold, with no explanation, reads as an insult. Your seller doesn't know they'd be the one carrying the note. They don't know what terms means. They see a number and a payment schedule from a stranger, and they feel like someone's trying to work them. I'd rather earn the right to make that offer than blow the relationship by leading with it.
So what I want first is simple. What's the seller's actual goal? How much do they truly need to walk away with? What's really going on? Then I can build something that fits.
You've got a listing that's been sitting, and the only thing coming in is lowball cash. So you tell the seller the market has spoken.
But run the payoff. On the deals that get stuck, the mortgage payoff, principal plus arrears plus fees plus liens, is frequently higher than what any cash buyer can pay. Which means those offers were never going to close anyway. The seller can't accept them. They'd have to bring money to the table to do it.
That's not the end of the deal. That is precisely the deal where terms works and cash can't. Because a terms structure takes commission, repairs and holding costs out of the math, the number can clear a payoff that no cash offer ever could.
The lowball isn't the market speaking. It's the market telling you it can't buy this house.
This is the law, and I'll say it to your seller as plainly as I'm saying it to you: you can name the price, or you can name the terms. You don't get to name both.
If your seller needs maximum cash on closing day, they get a discounted price. That's what cash costs. If they don't need it all up front, the price can go up, sometimes a lot. Money later is worth less than money today, and that isn't a trick. It's the entire reason terms can pay more.
I'm not going to lose money on a deal, and I'll tell you that to your face. But I'd rather build something that actually works for your seller than win a negotiation and watch it fall apart at the closing table.
The more you have, the faster I can answer. But send it anyway if you don't, a half-answered file beats a listing that dies quietly.
A listing, a seller, or just a question. Tell me what you’re looking at and I’ll tell you straight what’s possible.
You'll hear from me within a few hours, and within a day at the outside. You'll get a yes, a no, or exactly what I'd need to decide. A no is a real answer and you'll get it fast.
Skip the write-up. Press the button and talk to me like we're standing in the driveway. Partial information is fine. I'll listen to the whole thing before I ever call you back.
The more you tell me, the faster we get to a solution. Things like:
What's the property, and what's the seller trying to do?
Where are things stuck?
Payoff, arrears, condition, timeline, whatever you have.
Tell Me™
Here's your message. Listen back if you'd like, then send it, or record it again. Nothing goes anywhere until you say so.
Thank you. I'll hear the whole situation and get back to you personally. Your client stays your client.
Your recording comes to me and no one else. No obligation, and your client stays your client. I'll get back to you within a few hours.