Real estate firm buys homes so owners can buy again
In today’s super-tight real estate market, the “sell-before-you-buy” dilemma can be brutal for Connecticut homeowners looking to move.
William Raveis Real Estate announced Wednesday a new service in which it will purchase the homes of any real estate clients, who may be having difficulties getting competitive offers to cash out of their homes as they search themselves for new digs.
“With Raveis Purchase, we saw that listing inventory was going to get very, very tight,” co-president Ryan Raveis said Wednesday. “They have the option to make a very quick offer and unlock their equity in order to move into their house, ... knowing that they have a guaranteed sale in their pocket.”
The service is geared toward homeowners looking to take advan
tage of a continuing hot market in the metropolitan New York City area but needing the cash before buying themselves, Raveis said.
Danbury-based Cartus was an early pioneer in offering home purchase options as part of the broader corporate relocation services it offers big employers. Parent company Realogy saw its planned $400 million sale of Cartus to Sirva collapse last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on employee transfers, as remote working was adopted widely.
In recent years, “iBuyer” programs have come into the mainstream from companies like Zillow, OpenDoor and Redfin.
“I do think that iBuyers are competing with one another because it’s a commodity service,” said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman, speaking in February on a conference call. “The reason we’re convinced that we can be effective is, first of all because we can be efficient — that’s just the nature of our business. We’ve been committed to efficiency for a long, long time.”
William Raveis has its main office in Shelton; there are currently 2,364 agents in Connecticut alone. The company offers brokerage services in all six New England states as well as New York, New Jersey and Florida.
The Raveis Purchase program is available in all nine states.
Connecticut saw nearly 10,500 homes sold between January and March, according to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties — a 23 percent bump from a year earlier.
William Raveis will front up to 80 percent of a home’s estimated current value to the seller, forwarding the difference from the final sale price after it performs any needed renovations and finds a buyer. Details are online at raveispurchase.com, with consultations free and carrying no obligation.
“We have an appraiser look at the property; we look at comps, we look at what things are selling for,” Raveis said. “The price at which they ultimately sell the home is 100 percent market-driven.”
Real Trends ranked the firm as the 11th largest nationally by closed transactions in 2020, with a 16 percent increase from the year before to nearly 27,000 in all. Raveis also underwrites mortgage loans and offers homeowners insurance.