Should you write a Personal Letter to the Home Seller?

With the Real Estate market on fire, buyers are looking for ways to separate their offer from other would be buyers. F or many this includes a personal letter to the seller with a picture of the family. These personal letters or "Love Letters" can be the difference in whether your offer gets accepted or can also be the reason it doesn't and there may lie the biggest issue.

Personal Letters  or "Love Letters" have become have become common place in this market but they are becoming a point of controversy. While they have the ability to add a personal touch to your offer, they also add a level of liability to sellers and buyers.  Fair Housing Laws do not allow  discrimination is the sale of a home and by revealing certain details in your letter you may be opening yourself and the seller to a potential lawsuit. Many buyers think that the offer with the highest price wins and that is definitely not always the case. There are many factors that go into the best offer and a seller needs to be very careful not to accept an offer based solely on a letter.

It has gotten to a point where many listing agent will not present the letters to their sellers to make sure they don't open them up to potential Fair Housing Violations. Many listing agents go even further by eliminating the buyers names from the offers so that the sellers has only the terms outlined in the offer to make their decision.

As a home buyer the decision to add a personal letter is yours to make, we just want to make sure that you have all of the facts and also know that there is a good chance that it will not be seen by the seller.

Are you in the market for a new home? Stay tuned for more articles about the home buying process from Mike Russell & Associates. We have over 20 years experience navigating buyers through to process of buying homes in Johnson County Kansas and the Kansas City Metro Area