Your house is on the market and you have been marketing it. All of a sudden you get an offer. The questions start racing through your head. Do you accept it as is. Do you counter on the offer? Is a better offer around the corner? Which points should you negotiate?

The best time to decide on what kind of offer you will accept is before you even put the property up on the market for sale.

This isn't as easy as it seems. There is a lot more to decide on than just price. Everything in real estate is negotiable.

People may want you to pay some of the closing costs, they may want some repairs done, maybe they want a new roof or a new furnace installed before closing.

First...

Decide what is most important to you. Do you need a certain amount of cash from closing? It is a good idea to discuss the benefits of selling your house with your CPA. In many cases the cash you get from selling your personal residence may be tax free money as long as you have lived in the house for two of the last five years you have owned it. It can be a main decision in deciding what kind of offer you will accept.

Do you need the money from your house for a down payment on another property? Decide how much you have to get from the sale of your house so you can structure what you will accept based around your cash needs.

When an offer is presented do your best to find out what is most important to the buyer. They may be asking for many consessions, but one or two may be very important to them, while others may not be very important to them at all.

They may be asking for a new roof, but may be just as happy with you lowering the price of the house a couple thousand dollars.

Now unless someone is making you a full price offer and giving you all that you asked for, it is always a good idea to counter the offer. If someone is making a serious offer on your house there is always room for negotiating.

A benefit to countering is that your house stays on the market until you accept an offer. By negotiating you may buy yourself a day or more for the chance of someone else coming in and making an additional offer on your house.

Now there is no need to get greedy. If you are happy with an offer by all means you can accept it. If you house has been on the market for a long period of time you may just be happy to see an offer. But if the house is new on the market you may be able to get a better offer while negotiations are still taking place.

If you are using a Realtor to sell your house, offers will come with a deadline for acceptance. A good tactic is to wait until near the end of the deadline to make a counteroffer. This way you do not look anxious and once again it gives you the chance that another offer may come in. There is nothing like two people that are interested in a house to help drive the purchase price up.

If you do get multiple offers on your property you are in the driver's seat. You can accept either offer that comes your way. You can also let the party of the lower offer know there is another offer on the table and see if they would like to increase their offer. Occasionally the bids will keep increasing depending on how much each party desires your house.

You also will want to make sure that you see a pre-approval letter from anyone who makes an offer on your property. You want to know that the party who is making an offer will actually be able to get a loan for the property.

If you determine the price you will accept before selling the property and use some negotiating tactics when offers come across you will make sure you get the top dollar for your house when it is time to sell.

Mike Stankewich, Realtor, Huntington Beach, Orange County, California

ZipRealty, Inc.

Huntington Beach Real Estate

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