Knock, creators of the quickly growing Home Swap, a tool that helps sellers buy a new home before their current one sells, have launched a solution aimed at supporting the homeownership goals of first-time buyers and those who don’t have a home to sell.
Knock GO, which stands for Guaranteed Offer, is a “cash-like” conventional mortgage product that allows buyers to write an offer on a home without including a financing contingency, thus assuring all parties of closing at the agreed-upon date.
Knock GO also provides appraisal gap protection, agreeing to fund the purchase via buyer credit (for up to 100 percent of closing costs) should an appraiser disagree with the contract price.
Buyers will need to be fully qualified, and Knock GO requires closing date to be set no less than 30 days from contract date.
Naturally, a Knock GO offer should appeal strongly to sellers sorting through multiple, contingency-laden contracts.
According to Knock GO’s terms and conditions, Knock “underwrite[s] your loan up front so your pre-approval is as good as it gets and we guarantee we’ll close, assuming no change in qualifying information (income, assets, debts and credit), loan program, or loan structure.”
Knock GO is available in 65 markets around the country, essentially anywhere Home Swap is available.
Knock charges only a $1,450 loan administration fee.
Knock GO is another unconventional mortgage offering to further upset the traditional way people buy and sell homes. IBuyers, it turns out, were only the start of the market’s evolution, the mortgage Big Bang. From rent-to-own models like Divvy, Landis and Halo to Knock competitors Homelight, Ribbon and Homeward, the home-financing market is undergoing rapid change.
In fact, Knock CEO Sean Black said as much in a June interview with Inman, calling the state of things a “transaction revolution” in terms of transparency, liquidity and convenience.
“COVID forced the industry to transform,” Black said in June. “Escrow and title and notary — things that seemed like the smallest part of the transaction — nobody was motivated to change those before. Banks wanted wet signatures, but COVID forced their hands.”
Knock’s new product offers another option to its certified agents around the country, allowing them to offer something directly to the first-time and second homebuyers in their CRMs.
Knock Home Swap, and now GO, is available through more than 250 leading brokerage firms with over 100,000 agents in 65 markets nationwide, according to the company.
“In today’s housing market many buyers are losing their dream home to offers that waive financing, appraisal and other contingencies,” Black said in the press release. “Both buyers and sellers need to be guaranteed that their transaction is going to close, and Knock GO provides the certainty it will.”
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.