Your response is key to successful home sale negotiations. It's not only the content of your response to an offer... the promptness and method of your response are important, too. And, if you fail to respond promptly and respectfully to an offer on your home, you will fail to sell it to those buyers.
The buyers' home search probably began weeks or months earlier with many hours of online research regarding their options for financing, communities, homes, and real estate agents to help them make sense of it all.
They may have traveled a long distance to this area to look at homes and spent hours - if not days, weeks, or months - actually looking at homes.
Something about your property appeals to them and they breath a sigh of relief as they sit down with their agent to prepare an offer. Exhausted by the whole experience, they forge through mounds of paperwork and review recent closings, pending sales, real estate trends, and the disclosures you provided about your home. Finally, they craft a 50+ page offer, including various appropriate addenda and acknowledgments of your disclosures. Their goal is nearly achieved, with the search and paperwork behind them. They sit back to relax now and await the sellers' reply.
The buyers' relief about making a decision is quickly erased, however, when the only response they receive is a phone call from their agent that the listing agent indicates the price is unacceptable. This is followed only by a one-line email from the listing agent to confirm the phone conversation.
Questions arise... Did the listing agent present the offer to the sellers? How do I know the sellers saw our offer? Are the sellers aware of the comps and local real estate trends? Etc., etc., etc.
What can I say? There's no evidence the offer was ever presented to the seller by the agent. I don't know the agent, so I can't vouch for his or her integrity and I remain silent. Again, I ask the agent to provide a written counter-offer from the seller so my clients can rely on their acceptance of all terms other than the price. The agent becomes hostile and insists that she will not re-approach her seller-clients unless and until the buyers raise their offer - in writing. I communicate this to my clients.
It's easy to see why the buyers might have questions and concerns... and why they might feel insulted by the sellers' failure to make a formal counter-offer. They REALLY want this home. If they didn't, they wouldn't have made the offer in the first place. However...
They will move on and perhaps settle for another home that doesn't satisfy their wants and needs as well as yours does.
My clients' offer on your home is a good one. Your response is the key to successful negotiations. In this case, however, the disrespect you showed toward the buyers and their offer is the primary reason your home doesn't have a "sold" sign in front right now. You both lose!
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