Sacramento Home Buyers Who Offer Less Than List Price

Buyers who offer less than list price in a sellers market probably won’t buy a home.

The way I see it, the problem with Sacramento home buyers who offer less than list price is it’s often a case of the blind leading the blind. I’m sorry, there is just no other way to say it. You’ve got buyers who have probably never bought a home in their lives trying to figure out how much to pay. And you’ve got a buyer’s agent who probably doesn’t sell very many homes. The agent most likely has had little, if any, training about appraising a home.

Often, these are buyers who offer less than list price because they saw an HGTV show. In those mythical fairy tales, buyers are always offering less than the amount the seller asks. Talk about overly generalized. We have a Sacramento sellers market, which means sellers can hold out for and will get list price. Very few homes for sale, high demand, hello?

Further, many agents struggle with deciphering comparable sales. They might notice a comparable sale in the neighborhood that sold for a higher price and try to compare it to the the home their buyer wants to buy. The difference might be a slight variance in the lot size. But they don’t know enough to figure out that maybe the back yard of that larger lot is filled with high tension power lines. So a smaller lot size does not equate to a lower sales price for the home in question. It is very likely they also don’t realize an appraiser might give only an extra $5,000 for a slightly larger lot. For many reasons, they hand out bad advice to a buyer.

Bottom line is most buyers who offer less than list price don’t get the home. The buyers wrongly blame the seller for being stubborn when they should be looking elsewhere for answers. These guys should be examining their own inadequacies. Coupled with the skills lacking in the agent they hired. Because that’s what caused them to lose the house.

Also, take a moment to realize that comps are not the only way to figure out the value of a property. Sometimes it really does boil down to the amount the seller will accept and the sum a qualified buyer will pay. That is the true definition of market value.

In closing, if a buyer is so certain a home is not worth the asking price, why not make a full price offer anyway? If it doesn’t appraise, the seller is likely to renegotiate. But the buyer will never get to that spot if the buyer doesn’t go into escrow. When it does appraise at the sales price, just close escrow. Get on with your life. Arguing gets you nowhere. Five years from now it will make no difference whatsoever.