BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE  A Flat Fee Service for Home buyers.

BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE Program is a private program sponsored by The Home Buyers Realty. It gives Tennessee home buyers the opportunity purchase their home with a smaller investment than would normally be possible when using a commission based Tennessee real estate agent or broker. Many home buyers may be elgible to use our BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE No Down Payment Program and other programs.  

The BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE Program is possible due to reduced transaction costs combined with a smart negotiating strategy. All of our programs are 100% focused on helping our buyers to purchase the best home for the least amount of investment and to empower our buyers to be more informed so they can take more control of the home buying process. After all “It’s Your Money”   

Our company has provided affordable Flat Fee MLS Listing Services to Tennessee home sellers since 1999. Rather than work for a commission we work for an affordable flat fee. As  a result of our efforts and our service we have saved Tennessee real estate consumers millions of dollars in real estate commissions across the state. We are seeing more buyers beginning to realize they are the ones paying the commission and they want to put their money to better use than putting thousands of dollars a Buyer Realtor’s® bank account.  

Most Buyers do not realize that when they purchase a home that the commission earned by the agents is paid by the buyer. This is true because it is part of the purchase price of the home. You will find most in the real estate industry tell you that the commission is a seller’s expense. If you look at the money trail you will find that the seller in most cases uses the buyer’s funds to pay all the commission to the agents. So it boils down to this. YOU pay the seller an agreed purchase price and the seller pays the agents’ commission with YOUR money. This is all handled at closing. To make this even more confusing to uninformed home buyers it is referred to as a Sellers expense on the HUD-1 Settlement Statement. No matter how confusing this may seem it is perfectly legal and a practice in an industry that has done an excellent job in making buyers think that sellers are paying the expense of the real estate commission. In fact the whole FSBO industry is built on sellers avoiding the real estate agent’s commission.  

Following is a video and and a couple of web pages that discusses who pays the commission: http://www.viddler.com/explore/whowood/videos/8/ and  http://www.realestateabc.com/answers/sellingagents/sellingagent2.htm and http://moreequitynow.com/buying/understanding-the-sales-commission/

When you finance your home the long term cost of the commission is even more concerning. Every year, even with a low interest rate loan (4.50%) you would be paying $61.54 per thousand dollars of commission that was was included in the mortgage. Throughout the life of a 30 year loan, this would mean you have spent $1,846.07 on every thousand dollars paid in commission or $11,076.42 over the life of the loan for a $200,000 home purchase that was financed.

What if there is no buyer agent or no seller agent? Then there is no commission. What if the Buyer’s  Realtor® did not work for a commission and only worked for a $500.00 Flat Fee paid directly by the buyer at closing. Then the commission for the buyer’s agent that is typically paid at closing could be negotiated to be used to pay the buyer’s closing cost. This is a Win-Win for the listing agent, the seller and you as our buyer. Note most buyer agents are offered a 3% commission of the selling price to sell a listed home. Some areas of Tennessee the typical commission is lower. For example it is 2.45% commission of the gross selling price in Knoxville and Knox county is common. When most Realtors® purchase their personal residence listed on the MLS they often waive the commission payment for some additional seller concessions in the sales price or additional closing cost to be paid by the seller. Most sellers are happy to do this. Obviously there are some sellers that do not want to negotiate any from their asking price, but that is very rare in a buyers market like we have now.   
If you  consider yourself a motivated buyer, have a take charge, hands on personality that wants to get the best overall value in real estate services or a buyer who wants to maximize your purchasing power on one of life’s biggest purchases, you are at the best place to BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEEE.

Keep in mind that several states across the US allow buyer rebates. Tennessee is not one of those states. It is illegal per Tennessee Code Annotated § 62-13-302 prohibiting the payment of cash rebates for a real estate agent or broker in Tennessee to give a cash rebate to a buyer. The following Tennessee Dept of Justice web page explains the law in more detail: http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/real_estate/tennessee.html

The time is right to BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE. It is definitely a Buyers Market meaning that there are more homes for sale than is buyers wanting to purchase them. Interest rates are historically low but projected to go up. There is a high inventory of homes in all price ranges for sale. pleanty to choose from. Also there are plenty of on-line tools  available for today’s home buyers to use. Our BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE Program is available in 67 Tennessee counties.

Below is just a sampling of only a few of the online tools and resources particularly helpful for buyers:  

VIsualTour – www.visualtour.com Although this is only one of many of one online sites that does Virtual Tours. It illustrates just how helpful good photographs are to buyers shopping for a home. The Internet displays photos so well it has helped buyers make their first visit to homes of interest on-line before they physically view the home. Look at this home and you can quickly determine this a very well kept residence and ready to move in to. It should show very well in person. Apparently it did as it went under contract within a few weeks of being listed.

Our Broker – www.ourbroker.com
Peter G. Miller well known and respected real estate expert and author has an excellent web site that is loaded with information about real estate.

Zillow - www.zillow.com Founded in 2004, Zillow provides 100 million homes online for sale or rent. One of the more popular features is “Zestimate” which helps estimate property values. Zestimates calculates this figure by taking public records and entering it into a formula that takes into account several details that a home has including where it is located. Zillow also displays what many homeowners paid for their home too which is also on public tax records. Note: Zillow has a disclaimer about their property value calculations.

Home Closing 101 – www.homeclosing101.org/
Experienced and first time buyers need and want to understand closing cost and the closing process. This site sponsored by American Land Title Association and it can serve as a great resource to learn more about the closing process.

Walk Score – www.walkscore.com
Many buyers prefer locations that are close to places they use on a daily basis. Proximity to local services, businesses, schools and restaurants can be determined quickly and easily. .Properties are rated on a scale from 1 to 100. Even more different categories are available.
Even if being close to everything is not important to you, it should be considered for saleability purposes in the future.    

Great Schools – www.greatschools.org
Schools have always been important GreatSchools.com rates homes based on the quality of local schools. Both public and private schools are rated teacher-to-student ratios, test scores,  and more. Parent reviews can be read online. Although subjective they can be helpful.

Yelp – www.yelp.com
Yelp rates local businesses based on subjective reviews. Rating are based on a 5-star system, with lots of details on the reviewers detailed experience with businesses. Yelp promotes upcoming events in the community such as concerts and art shows.

Google News – news.google.com
Google News shows news from numerous news outlets, websites, and blogs. Just enter a city or zip code in the search bar, you may find recent local news from multiple sources found on the Internet.

Front Door
You’ll find plenty of easy to use tools on www.frontdoor.com to help you develop an informed approach to buying a home. You can simplify complicated calculations to save you time. Listed below are some of the best tools on FrontDoor.com:
Rent vs. Buy Calculator
How-To Buyers Guide
Real Estate Glossary
Homebuying Checklist
Home Wish List
Home Affordability Calculator
Mortgage Calculator
What Mortgage is Right for Me?
Should I Pay Points?
House Tour Worksheet

Although you can find plenty more online home buying tools, you still will need more comprehensive and specific information than the online real estate sites offer.  We cover this with our Multiple Listing Service Data. We cover 67 Tennessee counties which include the following metropolitan areas:
The Home Buyers Realty is a member of 7 primary MLS covering 67 Tennessee which allows us to provide the most up to date and comprehensive data available to home buyers using our BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE Program.

The primary MLS that serves your area provides a wealth of information. The home buying process is reasonably complicated and with any complicated task, hiring a professional can make a big difference so long as the price of the service does not exceed the value of the service being provided. Our goal is not to sell you a home. We simply want to help you buy the right home. You may feel you need a local agent and you may need one. Our approach is not for everyone but one thing we know is anytime you buy anything and the sales person is working for a commission there is always a conflict of interest. For a home purchase the real estate the commission is huge and those in the industry will not openly discuss this with you. They may even tell you their services are free. As we discussed previously unless you understand who is actually paying the commission and footing the bill for the whole real estate industry, you may not be motivated or informed enough to know why the BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE Program can offer an unmatched advantage to you when negotiating your offer to purchase.    

We offer several Buyer Programs focused on different needs for Tennessee home buyers:  
1. BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE with No down payment and no closing costs  
2. BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE with a 3% down payment, no buyer closing costs and no Private
  Mortgage Insurance (PMI) payment.   
3. BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE with a no down payment USDA Loan
4. BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE with a 20% Down Payment – Conventional Mortgage Loan   
5. BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE with a VA Mortgage Loan – No downpayment and no closing cost
6. BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE with a 3% Down Payment FHA Mortgage Loan and no closing cost
7. BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE with a HUD Bid – Our low flat fee helps to make our HUD Bids more competitive than brokers submitting bids using a commission based HUD Broker.

Note: Individual loan type will have certain requirements unique to each mortgage loan program.

Our fee for this service is so low for this service we cannot afford to hold your hand through the home buying process. The amount of work involved to service each buyer forces us limit the total number of buyers we agree to work with. We intend to be there for you to offer general guidance and professional assistance. We have acquired a lot of experience through working residential real estate sales full time for over two decades. We can help you to be more organized and be a more informed home buyer. We’ll negotiate the offer to purchase per your instructions while offering professional advice on the overall best approach to use when negotiating. We use professionally approved Tennessee Association of Realtors® Purchase-Sale Agreement. This is the same purchase agreement that is used by 90% of the real estate agents and brokers across Tennessee. Our offers have more negotiating power than the typical Buyer’s Realtor® offer primarily because the seller can afford to work with our buyers better than most buyers that he/she will encounter. On most homes our offers have potential to be approximately 3% more advantageous to our buyers than the typical offer prepared by a Tennessee Buyer’s Realtor®. Our low flat fee of $500.00 paid at closing rather than a 3% commission is what accounts for this advantage. When most sellers looks at our offer it is clear that it reduces the overall transaction cost significantly (with a zero buyer agent commission due at closing) thus it makes it easier for those savings to be passed on to you as our buyer via seller concessions rather than being used to pay a Buyer’s Realtor® commission. If the seller is offering a bonus to get the home sold we share that information with you and use that to leverage additional negotiating power for you as a buyer. The “average” MLS listing often sells for 95% of the seller’s asking price. With the potential savings our BUYWISE™ IN  TENNESSEE Program offers, it is not unreasonable to expect at least an “average” of 8% savings. Your offer may be prepared expecting a bigger savings based on property values of competing homes. Every property is different and averages used above are simply based on: 1. The average amount that homes often sell for is 95% of the asking price before any commission is deducted. 2. The average commission offered to buyer agents is most often 3.0% of the selling price.     

BUYWISE™ IN TENNESEE includes the following:

• No upfront risk! Pay for this service at closing only if you are a successful home buyer.
• 100% focus on minimum “cash” investment by you the buyer
• No Buyer Realtor® conflict of interest due to selling agent commission being earned   
• No payment made to The Home Buyers Realty made for services rendered until closing
• No Buyer’s Realtor® sales pressure
• Mortgage loan pre-qualification and pre-approval provided by a mortgage loan professional
• Online Home Buyer Counseling provided (if required) by lender
• Guidance on deciding whether to buy or rent a home
• Home buying guidance offer Step By Step Instructions and suggestions
• many Home Buyer Questions and Answers covered on-line  
• Personalized daily updates of MLS listed homes to consider that are for sale
• MLS Property Reports and Public Records specifically designed to help you
• Freedom to search for For Sale by Owner homes with assistance   
• Guidance on finding the right neighborhood that meets your life styleGuidance on how to protect your interest as a home buyer
• Guidance on finding, locating and buying the right home for the right price
• Offer preparation and guidance on negotiating the best overall best value
• Acceptable professional home inspection contingency included in each offer  
• Purchase price contingent on appraisal included in each offer
• Approval of a Property Condition Disclosure is a contingency included in each offer
• HUD-1 Settlement statement provided to buyer 24 hours before closing
• Your closing attorney or title company handles your closing
• Facilitator/Transaction Broker compliance with Tennessee state law automatically includes the following:

1. To diligently exercise reasonable skill and care in providing services to all parties to the transaction;

2. To disclose to each party to the transaction any Adverse Facts of which Licensee has actual notice or    knowledge;

3. To maintain for each party in a transaction the confidentiality of any information obtained by a Licensee prior to disclosure to all parties of a written agency agreement entered into by the Licensee to represent either or both parties in the transaction. This duty of confidentiality extends to any information which the party would reasonably expect to be held in confidence, except for any information required by law to be disclosed;

4. To provide services to each party to the transaction with honesty and good faith;

5. To disclose to each party to the transaction timely and accurate information regarding market conditions that might affect such transaction only when such information is available through public records and when such information is requested by a party;

6. To give timely account for earnest money deposits and all other property received from any party to a transaction; and

7. A) To refrain from engaging in self-dealing or acting on behalf of Licensee’s immediate family, or on behalf of any other individual, organization or business entity in which Licensee has a personal interest without prior disclosure of such personal interest and the timely written consent of all parties to the transaction; and

B) To refrain from recommending to any party to the transaction the use of services of another individual, organization or business entity in which the Licensee has an interest or from whom the Licensee may receive a referral fee or other compensation for the referral, other than referrals to other Licensees to provide real estate services, without timely disclosure to the party who receives the referral, the Licensee’s interest in such a referral or the fact that a referral fee may be received.

Note: The BUYWISE™ IN TENNESSEE Program is a private program sponsored by The Home Buyers Realty – Ralph Howard Broker for the company serves as a Facilitator/Transaction Broker (not an agent for either party). He is not working as an agent for either party in this consumer’s prospective transaction. A Facilitator may advise either or both of the parties to a transaction but cannot be considered a representative or advocate of either party.

“Transaction Broker” may be used synonymously with, or in lieu of, “Facilitator” as used in any disclosures, forms or agreements. [By law, any licensee or company who has not entered into a written agency agreement with either party in the transaction is considered a Facilitator or Transaction Broker until such time as an agency agreement is established.

Still confused about real estate commissions? Go to >  Understanding the Sales Commission. or feel free to contact us. 1-888-932-0506 or via email to buywisetn@comcast.net.