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Our Multiple Listing Service in Sacramento now requires Sellers concessions to be entered into the system at close of escrow.

To someone looking to sell a home in Elk Grove... You may not have a clue what I am talking about!

First off... What is a seller's concession?

A sellers concession is a credit from the seller to the buyer to be used to pay the buyer's closing costs. Most lenders will only allow the seller to give a maximum of 3% of the purchase price to the buyer.

So if you have a $200,000 purchase price... a seller in most cases can give you up to 3% or $6,000 credit for your closing costs.

Keep in mind there is so much competition right now in the Elk Grove real estate market, most sellers don't have to give a concession to get their home sold.

Now... What is the Multiple Listing Service?

More than 25,000 real estate brokers and agents in Sacramento have access to our Multiple Listing Service called MetroList®. This database contains the current inventory of homes for sale in our area.

So back to the point of this post...

So why is it such a good idea to note the sellers concessions for every home sold in the Sacramento Multiple Listing Service?

One of my jobs as an Elk Grove Realtor is check the value of homes. Whether it is for a buyer who is making an offer on a home or a seller who needs to know how much they will net when they sell... Determining the value of an Elk Grove home is a big part of my job!

The problem is when I pull comparable properties they are often all over the map!

If you look at the top two comparable Elk Grove homes you will see there is a $7500 difference in the sales price. What often times happens is Seller #1 gave their buyer a $5,000 credit for their closing costs falsely inflating the "real" sales price.

In the past, this is information that we did not have access to. Well, we could call the listing agent for the home in question and ask if the seller gave the buyer a concession. Frankly, it would be a miracle if that agent called me back about their deal that closed 2 months ago.

Now this credit (seller's concession) will be noted for every home listed in our Multiple Listing Service!

Keep in mind Realtors are not the only ones who use our Multiple Listing Service... APPRAISERS use it too!

This will just be one more tool we can ALL use to lock down our Elk Grove home value estimates! The more information available.. the better we can all do our jobs! Go Metrolist!