Treat My Seller With Kid Gloves OR ELSE!
...we'll take our ball and not play with you!
That's the key takeaway from some recent reading about a listing agent's experience with her sellers.
One buyer presented an offer, a "lowball" offer, the seller took offense and refused to counter. End of negotiations.
Another buyer came in with a "oh how we love your home and it's so special and so on and so forth" letter attached to their offer and the sellers were "charmed" and got the deal done.
In a nutshell, if anyone should be offended, I'm more prone to favor the first set of buyers as being the ones that should have been offended. They presented an offer in good faith and were rejected without even an attempt to come to terms.
One of the early preparations when we're working with sellers is to let them know they're HIGHLY likely to get offers that may disappoint them, that's just the nature of how the game is played. EVERYONE wants to get the best possible deal for themselves, and the initial offer is step 1 in the process. The only thing that matters is the FINAL price and terms the buyer offers. The buyers want to start at $1? Go for it.
An offer is an offer, period. It's either acceptable or it's not.
If it's not acceptable, counter (repeat as necessary).
If it is acceptable, sign and accept.
It's really that simple.
As soon as we as listing agents or the sellers start using terms like "lowball", we've already biased the negotiations to the negative side.
The buyers liked your home enough to write an offer, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. And if the sellers refuse to negotiate because they're offended? Well that's a choice, and in my opinion a foolish strategy if you're a seller who wants to take that next step in your life. How many buyers want to deal after you've extended them the middle finger salute?
There are plenty of valid reasons for a buyer to start low:
- Cultural.
- The home is more than a little overpriced.
- They just "have to try".
Every one of those scenarios can finish with a successful negotiation (we know because we've been there, done that on both sides of the table for each of those cases). But for a negotiation to be successful, it requires BOTH parties to be willing to talk. And sometimes it takes more than a single round of negotiations for either the buyer to realize they MUST have the home or for the seller to realize, yes, maybe we WERE expecting too much for our home.
You still want to trade a big stack of money for our home? Let's talk!
Serving Warren County's residential real estate needs,
Liz and Bill aka BLiz
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