Vetting the Parents
September 17th, 2008 posted by David Gergely
Who hasn’t had this situation? You are out hunting for the perfect apartment with a first time buyer. Your buyer is a young professional that needs the help of his/her parents for the down payment or even a full cash offer. You look at a variety of apartments and you manage to narrow the search down to three that meet all or at least 95% of your clients needs.
Then it’s time for the parents to come to town to approve the selections available for their child’s perfect first home in Manhattan. Very often it is the parents first time to New York but it becomes readily apparent they are experts when it comes to the city’s real estate market. Soon all of selections have been eliminated and you will need to start your search all over again. This happened to me recently when I had found a $600,000 one bedroom with outdoor space and a doorman. The parents just couldn’t picture themselves living in this place given that they just paid the same amount for a five bedroom McMansion.
The bottom line is, a lot of times the parent’s approval is harder to get than to pass the toughest Fifth Avenue coop board! What do you think?
Nice story Dave. Eighteen months ago I worked with the daughter of out of town couple purchasing for her who had just started at Lehman Bros. (oops) She had a handle on what the prices were and they as home owners from Virginia could not grasp the concept of paying over $1000 a square foot and lowballed every offer in a dynamic market. Needless to say after four low ball bids, which were not countered, our relationship dissolved. From what I understand, she is still a renter. Steve