Are You Wasting Your Time to Write a Purchase Offer?

Even with the temperature in Sacramento hitting 108 yesterday, people were still outside, running around and looking at homes to buy. What’s a little dry heat to us in Sacramento? Doesn’t slow a Sacramento resident down one little bit. The heat also matches the temperature of the real estate market; it’s so hot your fingers sizzle when wet.

I received phone calls, emails and text messages all day from other real estate agents and from buyers. When I explained that in case they had been living under a rock, or maybe in Stockton, our real estate market is producing multiple offers for highly desirable homes, some of them were displeased. Not every home on the market is popular. Those owners of unpopular homes are unlikely to receive multiple offers. If your home is special, though, or you have a home in Natomas or Elk Grove, look out, because you will get multiple offers.

The displeasure seemed to manifest from the possibility of multiple offers. I don’t believe that buyers should feel threatened by the fact that other buyers want what they want. It means they’ve chosen a desirable home to buy, and that home will be desirable when it comes time to sell. They shouldn’t really worry about what other buyers are doing; if they want the home, just put their best offer out there. Just write a purchase offer. Don’t try to be cute or to negotiate, if you want the home, go get it. If you play around and take chances, a buyer could lose the home.

One sentence, though, continued to pop up during my conversations with these people. It didn’t seem to matter if they were a real estate agent or a home buyer, they both said the same thing:

“I don’t want to waste my time writing an offer.”

First, as a real estate agent, we are never wasting our time writing an offer. That’s our business; it’s what we do for a living. Writing offers and getting them accepted is how we get paid. Sometimes, offers are rejected. It’s a fact of life. Why, a Sacramento real estate agent can end up with a rejected offer even if it’s the only offer the seller received. Moreover, since about 90% of the agents in Sacramento sell only 4 to 6 houses a year, just how precious is that agent’s time in the first place?

Second, as a buyer, you’ll never buy the house if you don’t write a purchase offer. Saying you don’t want to waste your time writing an offer is like asking for a guarantee. Since when do you get a guarantee in real estate? OK, I know some listing agents who will give you that guarantee, but I refuse to throw my seller under the bus. And that’s what you’re asking me to do when you come to me because I am the listing agent and say you don’t want to waste your time writing an offer through one of my team members. Who do you think I am? Tony Soprano?

If you seriously believe you’re wasting your time by writing an offer to buy a home in Sacramento, then you’re probably wasting your time talking to this Sacramento real estate agent. And if your time is wasted, what does it say about how you feel about mine?