“What Should I Do?” - Navigating Buyer Offers.
How should you navigate receiving an offer? It is important to know when to accept, to negotiate and when to walk away. Receiving an offer on your home can be one of two things - thrilling and exciting when you get an offer you like or on the flip side, frustrating and disappointing when the offer may not be all you had hoped it would be.
The three main things we look at in an offer are, purchase price, conditions and completion date (closing or moving day). What are your expectations, how does the offer you received line up with these things. Are they acceptable or something worth negotiating? Your Real Estate agent will be able to help guide you on these things in a sense of the market and industry “norms”. Are condition durations longer than they should be, is the closing date unreasonable, is the purchase price being offered matching what is happening in the market. At the end of the day the decision is yours but we are here to help.
An accepted offer may look like a price point close to the asking price, right on the asking price and in some cases above asking, but it is not all about the purchase price - conditions are important to consider when reviewing offers. These don’t always make or break a deal and what I am referencing here is more the duration being asked to fulfill a condition. As a realtor we know what the market reflects and when something is unreasonable and will consult you when it may be a good idea to counter with a lesser amount of time for these.
Countering an offer more commonly known as negotiations, can look like proposing a new price that is higher than the one being offered. It might be shorter conditions, a longer or quicker closing or maybe it is a combination of a few or all of these things. Your realtor may call the co-operating/buyer agent and get a feel for where the details of the offer are stemming from. Knowing these facts can help us determine if we want to put a counter offer on paper, accept the original offer or walk away from the offer completely. I almost always recommend my clients to counter an offer rather than rejecting it because you truly never know what can happen.
Rejecting an offer is pretty standard and straight forward. This would be an offer that is maybe way off on closing or has conditions that don’t align with the seller's circumstances such as a sale condition (adding more time to the deal). This is also common with multiple offers - however with the current market this is not too common right now.
Each situation is truly unique and I always prepare my clients to have an open mind because even if an offer seems less than ideal there is usually a way that we are able to work with it or try to!
