The Offer

Step 6: The offer

You have found several homes that meet your needs and are finally ready to write an offer. Congratulations! If you have followed my advice and are not emotionally locked into this one house, you will feel more comfortable writing an offer inline with other comparables that your real estate agent has compiled for you or even willing to make a low ball offer to see if the seller bites. Keep in mind that if the seller rejects your offer, you can offer on a second property that meet your needs or submit a higher offer on the same property. Often, a seller will enter a counter-offer that starts negotiations. 
 
On the home for my son that I mentioned earlier, we liked the house that was 3.2 miles from his work just as well as the other property that we were considering that was within our original 3 miles search range. This gave us a lot of leverage in this slower market. Our original offer was $60,000 less than their asking price. The verbally countered at $35,000 off their original asking price. 
 
Save $50,000 or more!
 
At that point, we verbally stated that we would not go more than $50,000 off their asking price and indicated that we were ready to offer on a second property if they were not interested in our offer. As they did not want to lose their potential buyer, they accepted our $50,000 off their original list price offer. Just be sure that you are really willing to walk away and move on to another property as the seller could just as easily not accept a really low offer.