How Do I Put an Offer on a Bay Area Home Without an Agent
You don’t have to use a real estate agent to buy a home, and a lot of Bay Area buyers would gladly ditch their agent if they could ‘earn’ the tens of thousands of dollars in buying agent commission for themselves.
You don’t have to use a real estate agent to buy a home, and a lot of Bay Area buyers would gladly ditch their agent if they could ‘earn’ the tens of thousands of dollars in buying agent commission for themselves. However, due to arcane real estate laws and the selling agent’s financial incentives, you will almost certainly not receive the buying agent’s commission, even if you're present yourself. You will also find that trying to buy a home without an agent is a complicated and frustrating process, even if you have previously bought a home and are comfortable with all of the steps.
If you’re intent on buying without an agent (and comfortable that doing so won’t net you their commission), we’d recommend engaging a real estate attorney to help you navigate the process. A real estate attorney will be able to help you complete a standard purchase agreement contract and assemble all required materials to submit an offer without an agent. A good real estate attorney can review the disclosures and assemble the offer materials in a few hours, for around $5,000 - $10,000 in fees (which should make you wonder about the $50,000+ payday for a typical buyer’s agent!).
Like a lot of Bay Area homebuyers, we think that real estate agents shouldn’t earn $50,000+ when you buy a home. With escalating Bay Area real estate prices, home buyers should get a much better deal, and we believe that buyers should keep the majority of the buying agent’s commission.
With Unlocked, you get the best of both worlds. You will work with a licensed buying agent who will provide a white-glove buying concierge experience and help you navigate the process from start to finish. You’ll get data-rich, easy-to-navigate tools that will help you understand a home’s value, and interpret the disclosure packet. And, when you buy with Unlocked, you’ll get 1% of the purchase price cash-back at closing.
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We cover the entire Bay Area. We've helped clients buy homes in San Francisco, North Bay, East Bay and South Bay. We also cover LA and San Diego in Southern California.
We provide all of the services of a traditional real estate agent, with better data-driven tools, increased transparency and more responsive customer service. We can help with as little or as much of the home-buying process as you require. Some clients come to us with a home already found and a price in mind, and need assistance with assessing the home and executing the transaction. Others are still figuring out their budget, what they're looking for, and advice on where to focus their search. Wherever you are in your home buying journey, we’re here to seamlessly guide you through your home buying process - finding the right home, valuing it, understanding the disclosures, submitting a competitive offer, and closing the transaction. We're with you from start to finish.
Yes. Unlocked is a fully-licensed California brokerage (CalDRE #02060530) and all of our agents are fully-licensed California sales agents and members of the California Association of Realtors (TM) and the National Association of Realtors (TM).
With Unlocked, you’ll be working with one of our fully-licensed real estate agents to get all of the services provided by a traditional real estate agent, with better data-driven tools, increased transparency and more responsive customer service. So in many respects, your buying experience will be the same as working with a traditional real estate agent - only better!
In terms of how we’re different, firstly, we offer 1% cash back. This is the largest buyer’s rebate in California (that we know about)! That is tens of thousands of dollars that you can put that towards buying new furniture, renovating your kitchen and bathrooms or throwing that all important housewarming party (or more responsible uses like paying down your mortgage).
Secondly, our backgrounds are different than traditional real estate agents. We are a Stanford MBA and a Yale Law JD, who have also worked at some of the top management consulting, law and private equity firms (Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Wachtell and Bain Capital). We leverage our data-driven, customer-oriented experiences to deliver a more insightful, analytical and responsive home buying experience.
Thirdly, Unlocked has built custom analytical tools to bring data, insight and transparency to the key buying decision points and streamlined the buying process. For every home you’re interested in, we provide our Custom Valuation Report, an easy-to-interpret spreadsheet of recent comparable transactions, competing listings and third-party valuations, as well as our Disclosure Review Summary, a comprehensive summary of the 200+ pages of disclosures.
All-in-all, we’ve designed the buying experience that we would have wanted when we bought our homes, and we’re sure you’ll love it, just like our current and past clients have (check out our Yelp reviews).
One of our licensed real estate agents personally leads each transaction and will be your day-to-day point of contact throughout your home buying journey. We work closely as a team, and are able to jump in for each other if and when you have a time-sensitive request.