How My Buyer Saved $174,000 on a Puget Sound Waterfront Home

I want to tell you about a recent client who showed me why having a trusted Realtor walk beside you really matters.

She wanted a livable second home. My friend had been looking for a second home, someplace to take the dogs and have a change of scenery. It didn’t need to be perfect. In fact, she liked doing some projects, but it had to be livable, and the numbers had to make sense.

Waterfront was within her reach. In May, I sent her a funky cabin that needed a ton of work, but it had a sweeping view of Puget Sound. She was intrigued. She didn’t even realize that waterfront, high or low bluff, could be anywhere near in her price range. She looked around and found one more she wanted to see.

The view came with real problems. This one had problems. The roof on the house was shot. The roof on the garage was shot. The drain field was damaged. None of those are small expenses. When she sat on that front deck looking over the bay and the island to the Olympic Mountains, though, she felt that property calling her name.

She researched every repair cost. Here’s the good news. My client is an amazing researcher. She started talking to septic designers and septic installers. She researched septic systems and talked to their companies, and she had a pretty good idea of those expenses, but they added up to more than $50,000.

The numbers justified a lower price. We knew the seller would have a hard time selling the property at the current price. The condition made it very difficult to get a loan, and we could justify every dollar we needed to knock off that price. Plus, the seller was an estate, so they wouldn’t need the money for the next house.

Timing the offer paid off. We wrote the offer. I called up the listing agent, and before I even talked, because we’ve been talking, he knew my number. He said, “Sandy, we just did a huge price drop.” I said, “How much?” He said, “$50,000, down to $574,000.” I said, “Well, I have an offer for $570,000 in your email right now.” Wonderful. We were in contract.

Due diligence uncovered a surprise. This is where the story gets really interesting. As my buyer did her due diligence, she found that we were in an archaeologically sensitive area. That means they had found artifacts from North Americans from when they had been there many, many, many years ago. Because we were in this archaeologically sensitive area, an archaeologist had to supervise some of those repairs.

The costs kept climbing. For the soil study, we met the septic designer, the county person, and the archaeologist to dig and take samples. That’s when the full story started to emerge. We would likely need multiple archaeological studies and some geotech work because of the bluff. The water was too close to the drain field and would have to be moved or protected. Those studies and disturbance could go on for months, possibly over a year. When we finally got to looking under the house, we realized there was no insulation underneath. Yikes. We went from $50,000 of work to an additional $130,000 of expenses that we weren’t expecting, and we didn’t even know the time frame.

We gave the seller two choices. At this point, my job was not to tell my buyer what she should do next. My job was to help her understand her options so she could make that smart decision. Once we understood all the figures, we gave the seller two choices.

Option one, keep the price closer to what we had already agreed and then do a large holdback for the geotech and the archaeological work to be paid for after closing out of this seller holdback. Whatever wasn’t needed would eventually go back to the seller after we got our approved drain field in or after a couple of years, whichever came first.

Option number two, drop the price by $120,000 and release the seller from any other obligation or worry or concern about this whole property.

They took option number two on one condition: that we close in a week. We did, and she has her keys. My buyer paid $174,000 less than the original asking price of the property.

She didn’t let emotion decide. That $174,000 isn’t even my favorite part of the story. My favorite part of that story is that she didn’t allow the emotion of the incredible view and that emotional pull that she had to this property to make her decisions for her. She slowed down. She researched. She asked questions. She looked at those risks. She trusted me to help her navigate these complicated decisions so that she could make the smart decision on whether this was the right home for her. It was. She hasn’t stopped smiling yet, and now she gets to spend her days with her dogs overlooking Puget Sound, looking at the Olympic Mountains, and answering the call of that property that was calling her name, because she knows that’s where she belongs.

Everyone deserves someone beside them. That’s what I want for my clients. It’s not necessarily a $174,000 discount. Not every property has one. I want you to have someone beside you to help you explore your options, see the potential, recognize the risks, and negotiate strongly when the numbers support it, because buying and selling is not just a financial decision. Sometimes it’s an incredibly emotional one, and you shouldn’t have to navigate it alone.

Find the home that calls you. If you’re thinking about making a move, or if you have a friend or someone in your life who is, I would love to be a resource and help you secure the home that calls your name.

If you found this helpful, please share it with anyone who needs to have a trusted Realtor to walk alongside them. If you need any other real estate help, please reach out and call me at 425-422-7372, email me at Sandy@SandyAndCompany.com, or visit sandyandcompanyvideos.com. We would love to hear from you.