Las Vegas Homes, Condos, Land and Commercial Real Estate Blog

 Imagine a buyer has not followed my advice and made an offer on a Las Vegas home or condominium that is listed for sale and the offer is somehow is accepted by the seller. Now the escrow has been opened and since time is of the essence in a real estate deal, the buyer has to meet some strict deadlines like advising the seller of who the buyer’s lender is within two days of execution of contract and a couple weeks to find out if you can get the loan or not, If the buyer can’t get a loan, he/she must prove it to the seller and then cancel the escrow. There is usually a clause that if the buyer can’t close the escrow on time, there is some kind of penalty involved, like $100 per day.

Ok, now the buyer should get at least 3 different estimates from three different mortgage lenders, compare them and decide on one lender that the buyer must provide to the seller, all in two days, sounds deceptively easy but it is not. Call three mortgage lenders and see if all will even return your call within 48 hours.

After that the buyer must provide the chosen lender with all kinds of documents such as tax returns, pay stubs and bank statements and hope that he/she will qualify for the loan and that the lender will give him a definite answer within 14 days. Needless to say the answer could be negative as the history of the homes or condominiums that are listed for sale in Greater Las Vegas MLS is full of homes or condos that had pending status and fell out of escrow due to the buyer’s inability to finance the property; in which case the buyer’s, realtor’s and seller’s time and effort have been needlessly wasted and the buyers feels like heck because they didn’t get their dream home.

The other point is that Murphy’s and Masoud’s Law governs a real estate transaction and it goes at follows,

First Murphy’s Law:

If anything can go wrong in a real estate transaction, it will and at the worst possible time.

Then, Masoud’s Law

Things that should not go wrong will go wrong and at the worst possible time due to human interference in the process.

For example: in one deal my buyer was a US veteran and was using a VA loan, the underwriter made a mistake and processed his loan as an FHA loan, don’t ask me how, and this was at the funding time. I told the mortgage officer you broke it, you fix it NOW. They wisely did within 24 hours and all went well. Could anyone have predicted this, no, but my buyer was underwritten approved and we were ahead of the process, so we had time to react.

If all of the above has not convinced you to become pre-approved first so you have ample time to compare mortgage loans and lenders without the stress of deadlines, pick the loan that offers you the best terms and know how much home or condo you can afford, nothing will. But it would help if you go and look at empty foreclosed homes and condos that someone used to call home and don’t make the same mistake as they did.

I will discuss How Las Vegas condominiums, houses, land and commercial real estate for sale helps to educate you about the process of financing your mortgage and what we do for you in the next article.