How To Buy Homes That You Can't Find In Current Real Estate Listings

Most people head to real estate listings when they want to buy a house. However, at any particular time, the available listings do not represent all the houses you can buy; there are always homes that you can buy even though they aren't on the market. You may be interested in such properties, for example, if you want to increase your selection or if you are interested in a specific property. Here are some of the potential sources of off-market properties:

Old Expires

In real estate lingo, "old expires" are homes that were on the market a long time ago, but were never sold and were taken off the market. The fact that these properties aren't on the market doesn't mean that their owners have given up on selling them.

There are different reasons why home listings expire. For example, a seller may be discouraged if their property stays in the market for a long time. A property's listing may also expire if the property is poorly marketed, for example, if the seller doesn't use an agent.

Ask your real estate agent if they have access to expired listings. Some sites that list such properties, and you can use them to approach the sellers, but this isn't the best way to go about it. The sellers are likely to be grumpy with disappointment, so they may be more difficult to deal with than sellers of current listings. However, seasoned real estate agents know how to make the right approach for "old expires."

Properties About To Be Listed

These are properties whose owners have decided to sell but haven't gone through the preliminary preparations to put up the houses for sale. If you wait a little bit, you will get the houses on the relevant real estate listings. However, you don't have to wait and risk somebody else snagging a desirable property before you.

Therefore, if you can't find what you want on the market, ask your agent for properties that are still being prepped for listing. An experienced agent who sells lots of homes in the region you are interested in is bound to have access to such information.

This is one of the advantages of dealing with an agent. If you are green about the real estate industry, you may go through your home purchase process without even knowing that buying off-market properties is possible. With an agent, however, you may land a gem of a property that other buyers don't even know about. Keep these tips in mind when looking for vacation homes for sale.