We are considering making an offer on a home that is on the market because the owner was relocated for work. So while it seems we would be dealing with the owner & their realtor, the actual final sale will be through a relocation company.

I've never dealt with this before so unsure of the dynamics. Does anyone have any experience/insight into how this process works or why it's setup this way?

Here is my experience with this from the town I previously lived in

BNSF employees were relocated
Listed their homes on the market
Homes did not sell in under 12 months
BNSF compensated employees and had homes sold through relocation company.

I bought a house a few years ago from a relocation company. The process was not that unlike any other real estate transaction. I thought it was kinda odd, because the owner(the actual person who lived there) was still just as involved in the process.

I think I had to sign a few extra things, but that was it.

I did this exact thing a couple of years ago with my current house. The biggest issue I ran into was on the inspection. A water leak was found in the wall of my second bathroom. The relocation company had actually had an inspection of their own done just a couple of months prior and the water leak was missed (it had been there awhile). They pushed back, wanting to know why this was not caught during the first inspection (not really my problem though). They eventually relented and made the repairs and fixed the damages. The only other thing was there seemed to be a lot of additional paperwork.

All in all though, not terribly different from any other purchase.

Yep, just read the contract carefully.

can be good and bad. Good because they seller isn't emotional about the property and usually just wants it off the books. Bad because they can take a longer and the sellers are usually out of state so have no local knowledge.

We had an issue with bad cast iron plumbing in a house that we offered on. Seller balked at replacing the plumbing areas where it was basically shot. That surprised me. They ended up selling it for much less about a year later. I would imagine they still had to replace the plumbing.

Not sure if you're using a Realtor or not to represent you as a buyer, but you probably should. Buying froma relo is a little different than the traditional transaction. The option periods are different, negotiating repairs can be different, but like Diggity said you can potentially get a good deal because if the relo owns the property the emotion from the seller's side has been removed.

jjdavis85 said:

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Not sure if you're using a Realtor or not to represent you as a buyer, but you probably should. Buying froma relo is a little different than the traditional transaction. The option periods are different, negotiating repairs can be different, but like Diggity said you can potentially get a good deal because if the relo owns the property the emotion from the seller's side has been removed.

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This is true. When I bought my house, I offered under list, knowing that it had been on the market a couple of months and they had already had a couple of people back out, not wanting to deal with the relocation company. I honestly thought they would come back with a counter, and was rather shocked when they did not. The process was a little chaotic at times, and my realtor earned his money I would say, but it worked out for me.

Also be aware that the owner may not be willing to deal. Many companies have a buyout number as part of the relocation package. If the house doesnt sell within x time for >=y price, the relocation company buys the house at y price. If your offer is too close to y the owner has no incentive to sell.

At least this is how my company's relocation package works.

Aggie71013 said:

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Also be aware that the owner may not be willing to deal. Many companies have a buyout number as part of the relocation package. If the house doesnt sell within x time for >=y price, the relocation company buys the house at y price. If your offer is too close to y the owner has no incentive to sell.

At least this is how my company's relocation package works.

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Flip side is some companies now will not buy the house, but instead offer incentive for quickly selling in 3 or 6 months. Or may not buy out from their employee but offer loss on sale incentive to cover Some percentage if they have to sell below purchase price. So what you may think is a low offer may be better for the seller if they can close quickly after listing.

Thanks for the input all.
My question was a bit open ended. My primary curiosity was more regarding how the involvement of the relo company affects list pricing / offer acceptance/ negotations , etc.
Does the relocation company agree to pay $xxxx before the house is listed and then anything above that is gravy for the actual owner?

Example: if the relo company agrees to pay $100,000 and the owner lists for 150,000, they have ~50,000 to play with as far as negotiating on offers?

usually, it's more a matter of making the seller "whole" on the transaction. They're all structured differently though so no good way to answer that question.

We tried this once but the relocation company was just way too slow to deal with. We finally gave up and moved on

They're all different but I really haven't had a BAD experience. The last I did worked in our favor when a storm a few days before closing resulted in roof damage and landed my buyer a brand new fairly expensive roof.