My husband and I received a letter (snail mail) from a local real estate agent stating that his young clients were looking for a home on our street (wrong street listed) because they have family on the same street. (The letter also had the couple’s wedding picture attached.)
The letter stated that they were looking for their “forever home” and had investigated our property’s location, lot size, lot orientation and amenities and were ready to discuss terms to move into their forever home. The letter goes on to say that they realized that our property was not for sale, but given the intensity of the market, they were ready to discuss terms.
So, I get that it’s a cold call.
I get that people are desperately everywhere trying to find and purchase a home.
I get that the inventory is low.
But, dang it, it was a little insulting. The tone of the letter seemed to imply that-“you’re old, they’re young, and you’re done”. Again, it’s a letter so you really can’t infer tone.
How do we convey that WE don’t want to move from our “forever home”?
Should we write the guy back and make suggestions as to how to really approach someone who might be willing to move?
My husband was: “shredder, gimmick, desperation, just toss it”.
Ignore the letter. The RE agent is carpet-bombing the entire ‘hood with the same letters allegedly from the young couple. Here in my neck of the woods, developers show up on elderly folks’ doorsteps with “paperwork from the county.” Once signed, the title to the house is theirs.
It is a scam of sorts - your property must be sold to build (insert whatever good cause), so here is a great offer and conveniently paperwork to be signed, no realtors needed. Our paper wrote about such scammy deals. I have not heard of anyone actually falling for it.
Every week or two we throw realtor solicitations in the recycling bin, and a few times developers stopped by to inquire.
A few years ago, right after DS2 graduated from high school, we got a bunch of these. One agent dropped off a potted plant with her letter. I was so incensed–irrational, I know–that I marched down to the real estate office and brought the plant back.
What some agents do is get a hold of the high school directory and write every family that has their last child graduating from HS. Real estate taxes here are very high, and some percentage of parents DO skedaddle after the last one is out of the nest.
We get a ton of solicitations begging us to sell. We bought low 16 years ago and the value is nearly double now. Our issue is our payment is $1,000/mo less than the average rent in town so where would we go? Retirement is 10 years out…
Is there a potted plant fetish that I don’t know about?
Why would anyone be influenced to sell a home because they received a potted plant?
What kind of “pot” are we talking here?
(Do you have to smoke it?)
Yes, we bought (struggled) to pay for this home over 30 years ago. SoCal. Now, it is worth almost six times what we paid for it!! Holy cow! How do young people do this? (Thankfully, our kids have done well.)
Obviously, the couple in question could really not afford this home if we were to ever sell.
We used to get letters like that 20+ years ago in our hot market Chicago suburbs. We got fake hand written letters from allegedly young couples. I even got stopped once while backing out of the driveway by someone asking if we wanted to sell.
Don’t take it personally!
Later on, when we knew we would be selling in a few years, I saved the letters from developers and contacted them when we were ready. No one was able to match the offer from a developer I researched myself after seeing the properties he was working on in my neighborhood. He said he would give $5000 over our best offer - and he did.
@Marilyn, I know that we are in the same town. I imagine that you’ll be getting more of these letters too.
I think that the letter was poorly crafted and not proofed.
Several times the name of another street was mentioned. Who does that? I guess “desperation” calls for “anything goes”. Sniffing too many potted plants in their offices.
