How Agent Tony Swainey Helps his Clients Make the Best Investment

For almost a decade Tony Swainey has been blending his lifelong interest in real estate with over 30 years of sales and marketing experience. As an agent with Keller Williams in Charlotte, he specializes in finding properties that need a little love, but are great investments. These fixer-uppers can mean big returns, as home improvements and changes in the market often make these properties worth more than when his clients bought them for.

Paying More While Getting Less

However, in the last few years, the market in Charlotte’s has changed drastically. Home prices have risen steadily, climbing nearly 6% in just the last year. Meanwhile, inventory has shrunk to 50% of what it was last year—a drastic drop as the population has increased by over 44,000 people.

More buyer competition means more multiple offer situations, driving home prices higher. With so few available houses in Charlotte, Tony’s clients were increasingly faced with a tradeoff between closing on a home sooner or making a smart investment. If his clients needed a home now, they were paying a premium to get it. Not exactly the investment Tony or his clients were looking for. So, he looked for a solution to help his clients get homes at great prices. That’s when he found Ribbon.

Cash Offers that Make Good Investments 

For Tony and his clients, Ribbon makes buying a home possible when it wouldn’t have been otherwise.

With Ribbon’s Cash Offer program, Tony’s clients now have the opportunity to make a competitive contingency-free cash offer— a safer, and more appealing option for sellers. And sometimes this even leads to a discount! As sellers will often accept a lower all cash offer over a higher bank-financed one. Cheaper homes. Better investments. Happier clients. 

And the flexibility that all-cash offers create goes beyond just the sale price. It can also affect when a client can buy a home. Move up buyers have to both sell their homes and buy at the same time. And since sellers often won’t accept an offer with a sale contingency, historically Tony’s clients needed to sell their home before purchasing a new one.

However, with Ribbon, Tony’s clients can buy a home first, before selling their old home, which gives them more time to find a house that would gain value. “The Ribbon option allowed my buyers to go forward and purchase their move-up home,” Tony says, “without the entanglement of selling their existing home.” A win for everyone.

Looking Forward

A home is one of the biggest purchases Tony’s clients make. He wants to ensure that they’re moving into a property that they can love now and sell easily in the future. And he knows that no matter how the market changes in Charlotte, Ribbon will be there to help make homeownership possible.