How I Helped a Homeowner Buying New Construction Sell a Single Family Home in Perris

Jeff signed on a new construction home before we listed the one he owned. He went to the builder directly and told them on his first visit that I was his Realtor. That one sentence on the first visit matters more than most people expect. Builders handle agent registration differently and the rules change, so ask before you walk the model, not after. He had a deposit down and a completion date coming, and the only way to close on the new house was to sell 1020 Marigold Dr first.

That gave us under two months to list, market, sell and close. Not two months to think about it. Two months to be finished.

Because I wanted a crowd, and a crowd is what protects a seller who is on a deadline. The comps at the time of listing supported a number a little above $525,000. I told Jeff we were going to come in slightly under value on purpose, get eyeballs on the listing in the first 72 hours, and let the market push the price back up on its own.

Jeff has been a client since 2017 and he left the pricing to us. What I told him was that we did not have the luxury of testing a high number for three weeks and then walking it back. Every week we spent proving a price was a week we did not have.

We also had a price reduction ready to go at the two week mark if the traffic was not there. We never used it.

We talked through the other side of it before we listed. If the house had not moved, the reduction at two weeks was the first lever and the conversation with the builder about the completion date was the second. What is actually at stake in that situation depends entirely on what you signed with the builder, which is why I want to read the builder contract before we price anything.

Learn more about how I sell homes in Riverside County.

Builders get cautious about buyers who still have a home to sell, and that caution is reasonable. I call the builder every time, introduce myself, and walk the sales team through my track record on contingent sales like this one. It is a short conversation.

That call does not change anything in the contract. What it does is give the builder a reason to believe the timeline, and in my experience that credibility buys a little grace if something slips. Jeff's deposit was never at risk on this deal, mostly because we performed fast, but I make that call on every one of these anyway.

It created competition without an open house. Jeff was not in a position to host one the weekend we listed, so we packed the calendar with showings instead and ran about 25 of them between Friday and Monday. He had upgraded features inside the house and put artificial grass and hardscape in the front yard, so it showed well appointment after appointment with no scrambling in between.

Three offers came in by the third day. We were pending on day 5.

Here is what we do to market a listing in the first weekend.

Because it was contingent on that buyer selling their own home first, and we were already a contingent sale ourselves.

We had three of them. The first came in under asking and never got serious consideration. The other two are worth putting side by side.

On paper the $545,000 offer put $10,000 more in Jeff's pocket. I did not like it for two reasons. Stacking a contingency on top of a contingency puts too much between my client and a house he had already committed money to. And I was not confident the property would appraise at $545,000, because nothing that size in that neighborhood had ever sold there.

I would rather hand a client a clean closing than $10,000 and a coin flip on the house he is moving into.

It appraised at $535,000 with no issues. Per CRMLS, that was the highest sale price recorded for this floor plan in the neighborhood since the tract was built in 2004, measured at the time of sale.

Getting under contract that quickly gave us room to negotiate the back end of the deal instead of the front. We took a longer escrow so the closing lined up with the builder's completion, and we got Jeff seven days of possession after closing at no cost so he had time to move. He closed on Marigold, moved on his own schedule, and closed on the new build on time.

Call the day you sign with the builder, not the month after. Time is the only real advantage in a deal like this and most people spend three or four weeks deciding whether they are ready. Price the house aggressively from day one, because a listing that creates competition usually sells faster and higher than one priced at what the owner believes it is worth. And when your purchase depends on your sale closing, the safest offer is worth more than the biggest one.