Zillow Offers Moving Stories: Lee & Peggy Klokow
Lee and Peggy Klokow had everything but the white picket fence: a classic five-bedroom suburban Atlanta house in a new subdivision. It was the perfect family home, but for two empty nesters, the yard work, cleaning and upkeep had become a chore.
The Klokows were looking ahead to retirement and wanted a smaller condo that was mortgage- and maintenance-free, but they dreaded the thought of selling their house traditionally.
“We’ve sold enough homes to know it doesn’t always go easy,” said Lee Klokow. “There’s a lot of angst to it. For showings, you need to make sure the house is immaculate all the time. Deals fall through because buyers can’t get financed, and then buyers make all kinds of demands. We just didn’t want to go through that.”
Klokow had been looking for new homes on Zillow when he saw the link to Zillow Offers. He answered some questions about his house, clicked submit and received an initial no-obligation, cash offer from Zillow in about 48 hours.
“I think the offer was spot on because I had studied the market,” Klokow said. “I thought, we’ve got a sure thing here, we can close right away, and I don’t have to deal with any of the hassle of a traditional sale.”
The Klokows are one of the more than 170,000 homeowners who have requested an offer from Zillow Offers in 19 markets and counting. Zillow has plans to provide Zillow Offers in 26 markets by the middle of 2020 to keep up with the strong demand for a more seamless real estate transaction.
The offer from Zillow motivated the Klokows to find what they call their “rest-of-forever” home. They found a single-story condo in a quiet, pet-friendly community and were able to close on both homes on the same day.
“If we hadn’t come across this process, I really do believe we’d still be in that big house,” said Lee Klokow. “We’ve worked hard all these years to get to retirement, and I don’t want to spend the rest of the good years I have painting the house or mowing the lawn. We want to be able to travel and enjoy ourselves. Now we have that freedom and it’s nice.”
Lee and Peggy Klokow sold their home through Zillow Offers in May of 2019.