How to Negotiate a Real Estate Offer
There are many steps in selling and buying a home, but the most confusing one is negotiating the real estate offer. There are real estate pros who can help you with the process along the way, but it will help for you to understand the art of negotiating.
This is a concept that we are not that familiar with in America, but one that we should be taking advantage of.
The Purchase Offer
Every seller dreams of a buyer coming along that is willing to pay asking price for the house and they have cash so the process is smooth and easy. However, that is not reality.
The purchase offer for your house, when you are selling, is the beginning of negotiations. It will clarify what the sales price of the house will be along with the other necessary terms.
Parts of a Purchase Offer
The first step is determining that the buyer can actually afford to buy the house. Requiring a pre-approval letter can help this insight along. Once this has happened there are several other areas that you need to look at in the offer:
- Offer price
- Can the house appraise for the contract price to be approved?
- Has the buyer made an earnest money deposit?
- Will you be required to pay for some of the closing costs?
- Are you being asked to make repairs?
- Are you being asked to give a credit for improvements that need to be made?
- When is the settlement date? Can you stick to it?
If the terms that have been proposed are not what you were hoping for you still have several option. First, find out if there are any other offers that have been made on your property. If not, you can decide if you would like to wait to see if any other offers come in.
The Counteroffer
If you do not want to agree to the terms of the real estate offer you do not need to feel rushed into it. If you do not have other offers that you are able to consider it may be time to make a counteroffer.
This is when you establish the terms that you would like to see in the contract and offer it to the potential buyer. They then use that opportunity to see if the terms are satisfactory to what they were looking for.
Do not be discouraged, this process can go back and forth several times. There are many terms included in a real estate offer and it can be difficult to get buyers to agree on all the terms you want.
However, eventually you will both come to compromises until both parties are satisfied to move forward with the due diligence process.
When you are selling your house you do not want to allow yourself to feel pressured into agreeing to the first offer that comes in. Make sure that you take time to carefully consider all of the terms of each offer that you receive. Do not be so afraid of losing the deal that you accept something that you are not comfortable with.