Buy Homes & Get Rebate

The buyer’s realtor earns a commission at closing. A portion of the commission is then refunded to the buyer as a “buyer rebate”.
Homebuyer rebate essentially reduces the price a buyer has to pay for purchasing a home.
In the current day and age, most buyers are capable of searching for homes online. The abundance of information readily available effectively cuts the cost of traditional realtors, justifying the reduced commission. There are usually other conditions that buyers have to satisfy in order to get a rebate, e.g. buyers have to be pre-approved, and limited free showings.

It’s a common misconception that realtors work for you “for free”. So many buyers don’t think too much when choosing a realtor. But IT’S NEVER FREE! Buyer realtor’s commission, although on paper comes from the seller, ultimately comes from you, the buyer, from your purchase price. By providing you commission rebates, we are able to give you real savings.

No.
The IRS ruled that realtor commission rebates are not taxable income. So don’t worry that the big check you received will cause you tax burden at year end. Although we do recommend talking to your accountant about the specific treatment of the rebate when you file tax return.

Yes!
Realtor rebates are legal in most states in the U.S. It is perfectly legal here in Illinois and Indiana.

We offer on average over 1% rebate for our buyers, up to 1.75%. The actual amount depends on the services we provide, the property price, and the complexity of the transaction. All properties over $300k will be eligible for rebates.
We also offer maximum rebate program for experienced investors. Contact us for details.

We will send you a check after closing, or directly pay you through paypal/zelle.

We do have some conditions for the rebate program to work. We require that buyers are pre-approved, and are familiar with searching for homes online or with minimal agent assistance. We may limit the number of free showings provided.

If you are an experienced real estate investor with an established portfolio, has a clear investment goal in mind and only need minimal realtor assistance, we could offer even higher rebates. Contact us for details.

How do you do market research?

First of all, ask yourself what do you want from a house. Do you value a short commute time, or space for a growing family, or a good school district for your children, or a potential to flip the house for profit? Then research different neighborhoods.

As they say, location is the most important feature of a house. Which neighborhood you choose will directly affects your future lifestyle. When you have a vague idea of what properties might interest you, go to different open houses to get a feel. You’ll get first hand experience of further details of different properties, e.g. street parking, neighbors, yard work, oldness or newness, smells, sun exposure, room layouts, etc. Then you’ll further narrow down what you like and what you can’t tolerate.

We recommend set up a search alert on real estate websites, like Realtor.com or Redfin.com, so you’ll get notified immediately when new properties hit the market. Of course, we can also help you set up an MLS alert if you so desire.

With that said, we are not hanging you out to dry! We hold free consultations to identify your need, give recommendations, strategies. And we are always just a message or phone call away.

Buying a home involves many parties. Depending on whether you need a mortgage, there are different fees to take into consideration when you are setting your budget.

Most of the these fees exist whether you take a loan or not:

• Attorney fee
• Title settlement fee
• Recording fee
• Transfer tax
• Hazard insurance
• Inspection fee

When you take a loan, the bank or other financial institution will charge some or all of the following fees:

• Loan point
• Rate lock fee
• Underwriting fee
• Credit check
• Appraisal fee
• Title insurance
• Flood zone search
• Documentation fee
• Courier fee
• Property tax escrow
• Prepaid interest

Then how much closing fee should one expect? Not that we don’t want to give a number, but the reality is, there are so many different situations that makes the closing fee swing wildly from one property to the next. Any “ball park” figure could be so far off from the reality that it’s misleading. You may see an estimate of 2% – 5% of purchase price for most properties. But depend on your credit, the Bank fees could be over 3%. If the property tax is very high or very low, it could tilt your closing cost heavily. It should be noted that although the property tax and insurance escrow at closing are not necessarily “lending fees” as you have to pay them anyway, Banks usually require some extra money as their reserve, although refundable in the future. So those have to come our of your pocket at closing.

The bottom line is, all fees are eclipsed by realtor fees. And with our rebate, you can expect much less burden at closing.

1. Before everything, make sure you have a loan pre-approval or sufficient fund.
2. You identify the properties you would like to visit.
3. We will set up the showings for you.
4. We provide pricing consultations for the properties you are interested in.
5. Once you decide on a property you like, we will help you prepare an offer and present to the seller.
6. We will negotiate with the seller for your interest.
7. Rest assured all confidential information you provided us are confidential forever.
8. You’ve got a contract!
9. You need to pay the earnest money.
10. We will help you arrange an inspection.
11. We will coordinate with the attorney for contract review.
12. We will coordinate with the Bank for appraisal.
13. We will further negotiate on your behalf based on inspection results.
14. Your loan is approved.
15. Closing date is set. We will let you know what to prepare for closing.
16. We will coordinate for you to do a final walk through of the property.
17. Closing day.
18. We will send you a rebate check.

There are two scenarios to your question.

First, it is the law in Illinois that requires minimum services provided by one realtor representing his client. That means, if we represent you in this transaction, we are obligated to provide a bundle of service (drafting contract, negotiation, closing coordination, etc). It is only through our representation that we could get my commission, and provide you with maximum rebate.

The second scenario is we only provide consultation service on drafting the contract, which we think is your target. However, we wouldn’t be “representing” you as agent to client. (We will cut the crap where other realtors will talk about not acting out of your interest without representation) The key problem here is that the Seller’s realtor, seeing there’s no Buyer’s realtor, will keep all commission (6%) to himself, or they’ll push to represent you as a dual agent. Occasionally, you can negotiate directly with the Seller’s realtor to let him refund you. But we’ve never seen a realtor willing to let go as much as our rebate.

There is no hidden fees.

Under the Flat Fee Program, all services fees are listed and due upfront. And buyers will get full commission rebate after closing.

Under the Rebate Program, there is no upfront fee, but limited number of free showings may apply. If the deal closes successfully, buyer doesn’t need to pay out of pocket, as the remaining of the fee will be collected at closing. Buyer will get a rebate after we clear the closing check.

Simply put, too high a fee for unnecessarily wasted time.

Traditionally, people rely on realtors to recommend properties to them, and arrange showings (think of the days when property listings are kept in the local realtor’s big book…) Some people would even see hundreds of houses before making a decision, and maybe they decide not to buy, or not to buy with this realtor. The poor realtor, having worked for months counting on the deal closing to get the commission, ended up not being compensated at all. It was precisely because of this reason that realtors charge an exorbitant fee since they need to hedge for those people leaning heavily on them.

But today, we have so much information available online. Property listing websites have rendered the traditional realtor’s “property finding” service obsolete, and made finding a home much easier. Then it doesn’t make any sense to charge the buyers the old fee when realtors don’t provide the old services.

Let us explain how the commission is arranged in detail in a real estate transaction.

On paper, all commissions are paid by the seller at closing. Usually, the realtors’ commission account for 5-6% of the sales price, split between the seller’s agent and the buyer’s agent. So, even when the buyer’s realtor claims that she works for free, she gets paid by the seller in the end. She’s only not directly charging the buyer.

But how does the seller get the money? The money comes from you, the buyer’s purchase price.

Let’s look at an example. You bought a house listed for $450k. After a lengthy negotiation, you were able to get the house for $440k. That’s the price (besides other closing fees) you pay at closing. And after the seller gets the $440k, he would pay about $22k in commissions to both realtors (after other expenses, seller would net about $400k). The buyer’s realtor would get approximately $10k. And this money actually came from you, the buyer.

So with a rebate agent, she would pay you back a big rebate, say $6000, from the commission from seller. This is equivalent to getting an “insider’s discount”, further knocking down your purchase price. In the end, you are able to buy a $440k house with $434k.

Not exactly.

You can’t save by directly working with the seller’s realtor. The real reason isn’t like what you heard elsewhere “because they can’t represent your best interest since they are working with both parties”. A professional realtor should be able to clearly segregate each party she works for, protect everybody’s confidential information, and work only for the best interest of all of her clients.

The real reason is this –

It is written in the contract between the seller and the seller’s realtor. It is already laid out before the listing that the seller will pay a total of 5-6% commission no matter how many realtors are involved in the transaction. If the buyer has her own agent, then both agents would split the commission. If the buyer comes without an agent, then the seller’s agent would keep the whole amount to himself.

I’ve seen people trying to negotiate directly with the seller’s realtor. Most realtors won’t budge at all. Some will give a little concession, like a gift card.

But it’s nothing compared to the rebate we are able to provide you. For example, buying a $400k home, if you buy it with the seller’s realtor, you can at most get $100 gift card. With us, not only do you get your own representation, you can get close to $6000 rebate back.

We can provide consultation and recommendation at any stage of your house hunting.

But if you would like to secure the highest possible rebate amount, we would recommend that you research the housing market by yourself for a while. That means, search for houses online on websites like redfin.com or realtor.com, attend some open houses, drive by some neighborhoods, and obtain loan pre-approval. Our rebate runs inversely proportional to the number of showings we provide. 

Unless you are a super experienced buyer that knows exactly which house to buy, most people would need some time to get a feel of what they want in a home, and what their budget can and cannot get them. Your preference, financial condition, and family situation might change, so will the house you buy. We’ve worked with a lot of buyers with drastically different housing needs from when they started house hunting. That’s why we recommend working with us when you are relatively confident that you know what kind of house you want, and can reasonably expect to close within a couple of months.

Receiving rebate does not affect the price you pay for the house.

However, rebate does decrease your actual out-of-pocket payment.

The price is determined by market condition, and by negotiation of buyer and seller. Rebate or not, the price would be the same. But if you have a limited budget, a sizable rebate can ease your financial strain considerably.

In virtually all residential real estate transactions, the jobs of a realtor stay relatively the same. No matter what other realtors claim, it is the truth. And through many years of experience and experiment, we have standardized and quantified the core services, adopting the latest technological development, and developed our flat fee selling, and buyer rebate programs.

So if every competent realtor does the same job, what differentiates us from the others?

First and foremost, we hold ourselves to the highest integrity and professional standards. Our central focus is to protect the best interest of our clients. That’s why we never push our buyers to pay high prices. Many times we even actively persuaded our clients NOT to engage in certain transactions because we knew of the potential problems. And more times we’ve pushed for even lower purchase prices when our clients are already satisfied. We’ve also pulled the plug the minute before closing just to protect our client’s rights.

Of course, we strive to keep improving in terms of knowledge and professional skills, and keep up to date with the housing market and mortgage market. Our clarity and knowledge base could ensure our clients will never feel lost or helpless with us.

We don’t have vacation days. All requests will be answered at the earliest, within 24 hours.

We also adopt the latest and best technology, to make life easier for everybody.

On top of that, our broker/owner Edelyn is also a mortgage broker and well versed in the mortgage process. She could help clients locate the best mortgage programs and lowest rates. With knowledge and control on both the mortgage front and the real estate front, we could avoid many delays and  ensure a smooth transaction.