http://www.HampdenCountyHomes.com Hi Don Thompson, your local real estate expert advisor, back again to talk about making an offer.
So to quickly recap, you’ve gotten pre approved for financing, you searched for your next home, you found and now you want to make an offer.
Consulting with your broker advisor, you will want to develop a basic strategy. This will include the price you’re willing to pay, how much of a deposit or earnest money you want to put down, is there any personal property you want included, what repairs do you want to be made to the property, what other contingencies, like inspections, mortgage, closing cost credits, do you want to include and finally when do you want to close.
You can see it’s not just making a low offer and seeing of the seller will accept. This is where an experienced broker advisor can be of immense help. In the end the lowest price may not be the best deal for you if you’re not able to negotiate any of the other terms.
So where do we begin. I know most people like to go right to price but let’s talk about some of the other terms first. How much of a deposit do you want to put down? This is the money that the listing broker holds for the seller to take the house off the market. Contract law say it has to be “consideration” so it can be a lot or a little. The seller’s perception is however, the more you put down the more serious you are.
What personal property would you like to include, stoves, refrigerators, washer and dryers, lawnmowers etc are all personal property to ask for if you want.
If you or your broker advisor were to notice that there is, what I like to call a physical deficiency, that you would like fixed and if the seller wouldn’t fix you don’t want to buy then you should ask for it in the offer and not wait for the inspector to tell you it should be repaired because the seller does not have to fix it just because the inspector said…
That leads us to the inspection contingency giving you the right to do inspections and allowing you to back out of the deal and get your deposit back if you are unhappy with any results of the inspection. Just to say, The seller is not obligated to do any repairs unless you have negotiated them as part of the offer, Your right is to back out. On a practical note we may try to negotiate more repairs. There are a lot of inspections to consider, structural/mechanical, termite, radon, lead, asbestos. Some may be more important to you than others.
If you’re getting financing, there’s a mortgage contingency. You’ve been pre-approved, but you will need to make a formal application including the property which must be approved as well. I will talk about this process in another video. But if for some reason you could not get a mortgage you could back out and get your deposit back. The conditions for all this are explained in this paragraph.

Then you can ask for anything else that you want to happen, closing cost credit and any other condition you want to be met.
You decide on an appropriate closing date and then..
Determine a price that you want to offer. And you can be as aggressive as you like. Now, an Aggressive offer can be a little or a lot lower than asking price, but it can also be higher than the asking price. especially, if the property is priced right, in good condition and will be in high demand. This is where your broker advisor should be able to assist you.

Ultimately, who sets the price that a house sells for? If you answered the seller you’re half right, the buyer’ that’s the other half. It takes the seller and the buyer to come to a meeting of the minds to determine the sales price.

Depending on the situation, you may go back and forth with your negotiations until that meeting of the minds is reached. In some cases, however, because of competition for the property you may be asked to give your highest and best offer in which case you may not be able to get another chance and you’ll just have to give it your best shot.

So Let’s say we’ve got a deal...now what

That will be the topic of my next video, so look for that next email.

If you have any specific questions you want to ask me, cal or text me at 413.221.9981 or respond to this email and I will get back to you right away.

Thanks and have a great day.