Alan Washer has been a Chicago-based HomeVestors® of America franchisee for over 20 years. Washer’s years of experience have helped him identify trends in the investment real estate industry, and this insight has helped him build success with HomeVestors, even during today’s tumultuous market. By Heidi Lubrani
Alan Washer has been a Chicago-based HomeVestors® of America franchisee for over 20 years. Washer’s years of experience have helped him identify trends in the investment real estate industry, and this insight has helped him build success with HomeVestors, even during today’s tumultuous market. “What we are seeing now is that the first-time home buyer’s target houses seem to be selling relatively quickly. You don’t hear that on the news. You hear that interest rates are at 7%, and inventory is going up, and it’s just not true,” Washer explained.
HomeVestors’ franchisees function as a network; they keep their fingers on the pulse and share what they see in their markets so that they can adapt to those changes with ease. “Our median home price in the Chicago area is just over $300,000. The homes under that price seem to be selling relatively quickly. If you go to Boston, the median price is probably about $600,000, and in California, it’s probably $800,000. It’s all relative to the market that you’re in,” Washer said.
While interest rates are affecting the actions of buyers and sellers, HomeVestors remains the steady constant, offering a quick and easy way for homeowners to sell their houses. “We are not in traditional real estate. We are the people that give motivated sellers the place to be able to get rid of their property – the opportunity to sell when they just can’t sell. We are there for them when they want out,” said Washer.
While the holiday season traditionally brings a sales slump for typical real estate agents, it can bring unexpected gains for the HomeVestors team. “Our closing percentage, which is the number of leads we get versus the number of houses we close, is actually really very high in December. Although our leads might be down, the people we saw earlier in the year who were not ready are gathering with family and are now making decisions. They’re talking about what they’re going to do with Mom and Dad’s house. Our phones ring because of that, and they are more inclined to sell to a home buyer like us because we buy it as is,” Washer explained.
Therefore, when it comes to the normalization of the real estate market, it has little effect on the HomeVestors family of franchisees. “We are not the retail buyers; we are the buyers who are there for people in those ugly situations like death, divorce and the loss of a job, and those occur every single day,” Washer said. “There are so many people out there who need to have a service like us. Whether it is a good selling market or a challenging selling market like it is right now, we always adapt. As a company, we started talking about this last summer, so we have already been preparing ourselves and our franchisees on how to adapt to this changing market.”
Heidi Lubrani