It's an adage: "The first offer is almost always the best offer." Many REALTORS attest to this, and many of us have experienced it.
LEAPING LIZARDS! WHY dont/won't more people believe it?
CONVINCE ME!
I haven't been a REALTOR as long as some of you have been, but very recently, I've experienced this first hand. It's mind-boggling that it's a challenge to convincingly validate to sellers why there is a lot of truth in this.
Today, I am thinking about this adage again because I just submitted an offer a day after the listing came on the market. My seller has been looking for a while. He knows what he wants. And we don't want to waste time. We wrote for over list price with aggressive terms: no buyer inspections, 40% down payment, 3% initial deposit, AS IS. Sellers decided to wait until next week before they look at our offer.
WHY?
Isn't this house for sale? I brought a ready, willing and able buyer. If they weren't ready to look at offers, they shouldn't have activated it for sale on the MLS.
Why are we back to setting offer dates again?
RECENT EXPERIENCES (in less than a year)
- Early this year, I listed a bungalow. The same day I also told my buyers about the property. One couple instantly liked it and wrote an all cash offer. My seller accepted. Although more offers came in later in the week, the one we picked as a back-up had to withdraw because of job loss. My seller was thrilled he went with the all cash offer.
- My buyers submitted an offer on a 4-plex. But we were told the seller wanted to wait a few more days. They generated 5 offers, and picked one. They didn't even counter ours. Later, when it closed, I found out that the property sold for $20K less than what we offered. So I asked how come our offer wasn't accepted although we had aggressive terms --- 20% down, AS IS --- and our offer was higher. Turns out that after the buyers did inspections, they requested for a lot of credits and repairs. At that time, the sellers were so tired of the back-and-forth negotiation that they gave in and settled for a lower price.
- I listed a fixer. It immediately generated an offer. The owner's son thought they may get more offers if they waited a couple more days. It did generate offers, but for less. By the time they thought they should have accepted the first offer, the buyer had moved on. The property sat unsold while the siblings argued among themselves. They finally took it off the market.
- On another listing, we received a really good offer, but it was less than what the seller wanted. She turned it down. Another offer came in. She turned that down. Finally, we got into contract --- for the same price as the first offer. Had she accepted the first offer, we would have closed escrow two months ago!
RELATED POST
First offer is almost always the best offer ---- how true is this?
Comments(7)