Email Elizabethbuying a home in sacramento
Tips for Sacramento Buyers Involved in a Multiple-Counter Offer
There is no need to fear a multiple counter offer as a buyer.
You can’t be working in Sacramento real estate today and be unfamiliar with multiple offers; yet many people, especially buyers, are unfamiliar with how a multiple counter offer works. As a top listing agent in Sacramento, I often suggest a multiple counter offer situation to my sellers, if the situation warrants it. Not every purchase offer does, though.
For example, sellers could receive 3 purchase offers and only one offer might meet every need. There might not be a way to improve the other two offers to meet the sellers’ needs. Not to mention, that one offer might be perfect. It might be at the top of market and to go further with the sales price would mean it would not appraise. If the buyer’s offer is perfect, take it, is my motto. Don’t mess around.
However, if there is a way to improve the quality of more than one offer by issuing a multiple counter offer, then that is absolutely the best way for the seller to maximize potential. Sometimes, it might be only the one offer the seller wants to focus on, and the second offer might not have any bearing on reality whatsoever. Say, for instance, the seller receives a lowball offer, and the buyer’s agent has made it very clear the buyer will not budge. Then, at the same time, the seller has received a list price offer. A seller might issue a multiple counter offer, one offer to each, and not care if the first buyer accepts the counter offer. Because the seller’s sole intent might be to drive up the price or change the terms of the second offer.
The thing is, whichever way a multiple counter offer moves, the buyer does not know the terms of the other counter offer. That other buyer could be viable or not viable. Further, if all parties accept the multiple counter offer issued by the sellers, they are still not in contract. It’s not a done deal. The seller retains the option, in a multiple counter offer situation, to choose the buyer. The seller also retains the option to counter a second time, although that would be rare and is often unnecessary.
If you are a buyer involved in a multiple-counter offer, the best things you can do are: do not try to figure out the seller’s motives or the intentions of the other buyers. Focus solely on your own purchase contract and what you want to offer. Perhaps you want to counter and increase the seller’s offer? That is permissible as well. Just put your best foot forward. Do the best that you can — and you can never regret that — regardless of how the circumstances play out.
Negotiating Tip for Home Buyers in Sacramento
What a difference one number makes.
Everybody knows this negotiating tip for home buyers in Sacramento but many seem to encounter a temporary lapse of judgment when they are knee deep in the thick of things. It’s exciting to buy a home, to write an offer and to hope the seller takes it. I am seeing many home buyers so excited that they fall into the trap of thinking they need to try to get a deal when buying. To them, a “deal” is if they can pay less than list price, as though they are negotiating to buy an antique dining room table from a little old lady at an estate sale.
The problem with this kind of thinking is we are in the middle of one of the lowest inventory markets in recent history in Sacramento. There are very few homes on the market for sale. In Sacramento County alone, we have 1,841 homes for sale, and that includes condos. In comparison, in 2005 we had over 10,000. Many buyers. Very few homes. Seller’s market.
On top of this, say a home has been on the market for a few days. There is most likely no better negotiating tip for home buyers than to offer list price or better. If you offer less, you are not the only buyer, even though you might think you are. There is always another buyer lurking around the corner in this market, and that buyer will offer list price or better.
Think of it this way, 10 years from now, when you are still living in your perfect home that you bought because you listened to your buyer’s agent and offered the seller’s asking price, will you care that you paid what the home was worth? Most likely it won’t even cross your mind.
Further, if you give the seller an opportunity to counter your offer, and that listing agent is, say, Elizabeth Weintraub, well, I’m likely to scour that offer with a magnifying glass to figure out what other items the seller might want to counter. For example, if you ask for the title company and the seller is paying for it, you can bet that will probably generate a counter offer, just all by itself. Don’t sabotage the offer or take away the best negotiating tip for home buyers in Sacramento by showing how stubborn you can be.
Sacramento Home Buyers Can Buy Today and Move Before Christmas
Sacramento home buyers have enough time still to close before Christmas.
Sacramento home buyers have got to be driving up the insanity level of buyer’s agents. There seems to be an increase of activity in which buyers are submitting purchase offers and, upon acceptance, withdrawing those offers. I would almost be tempted to suggest that agents are not counseling nor vetting their buyers prior to writing an offer, but I know for a fact that is not the case in many situations. Just the other day a buyer canceled an existing escrow because the state-mandated natural hazard report disclosed the property is located in a flood zone, although the lender did not require flood insurance. Or, at least that was their story and they were sticking to it.
Most of Sacramento is located in a flood zone. And even if a property is not located in a flood zone, if Folsom Dam bursts, we’re all hosed downstream. Sacramento County is the most at-risk area for a flood in the entire country. Believe it, baby.
It is not the job of buyer’s agents to drag their clients kicking and screaming into escrow. I know some Sacramento home buyers think agents can be pushy but most of the agents I know truly want what is best for their clients. That attitude might be for somewhat selfish reasons because a happy client is a client who refers business to the agent. Unhappy clients push business away. Nobody in her right mind wants an unhappy client. Yet, it’s tough for agents right now.
It’s tough on sellers, too, when Sacramento home buyers fail to perform. Especially when sellers receive a full-price offer and the buyer cancels before the paperwork can make its way to escrow. I’ve had two of those types of situations yesterday, on two different listings. The buyers flaked out. Well, in one instance the buyer could not perform because the agent wrote the wrong kind of offer and made a mistake when she did her homework. The proper way to view that particular situation is: a problem averted down the road. We did not go into escrow as a result but at least we were not the dreaded “back on market” home listing.
With my ear to the ground — the good ear, not the one that I stuffed soda straws into when I was a kid and punctured my eardrum — I hear that almost half of the listings that are pending right now are blowing up. This means we are unlikely to see an uptick in closed sales for December. If it’s gotta happen in any month, December is a good month for a slow down because it’s seasonally a quieter time of the year.
There is still time to buy a home today and be settled by Christmas, though. Call the Elizabeth Weintraub Team at 916.233.6759.
Ever Wonder Should We Sleep On It?
Should we sleep on it is a common question in real estate.
Lots of people struggle to make big decisions like buying a home and might wonder “should we sleep on it” before committing to the purchase. The reasons run the gamut but often can stem from fear. They don’t want to make the wrong decision. They hope that sleeping on it will turn their brain into a Magic 8 Ball and give them the answer: To buy a home or not to buy a home.
The problems with this kind of strategy are myriad. For starters, whether to buy a home is a decision a buyer should have made before ever going out to look at homes. If you’re looking at homes with a Sacramento Realtor and you don’t know if you want to buy a home, please just stop. Go to open houses on Sundays or look at homes for sale online that are not really for sale on some of those popular websites that buyers who don’t know any better go to.
Should we sleep on it, it turns out, is a good strategy for figuring out answers to a complex situation. Buying a home, however, is a fairly simple situation. You either want to buy a home or you do not want to buy a home. If you do want to buy a home and you find a home that you love, then you should buy it. If you do want to buy a home and you cannot find a home that you love, then do not buy a home until you do.
Don’t fall into the trap of feeling obligated. Every so often I’ll go shopping at Nordstrom, for example, and I can’t find a single outfit I like. Nothing speaks to me. Nothing fits right. And I might feel like I should make some sort of token purchase because I’ve invested all of this time trying on clothing and not finding anything, and that’s a stupid reaction. Don’t buy a home just because you’ve spent a long time trying to find a home to no avail. Instead, regroup and re-strategize with your buyer’s agent. Maybe you need to look in a different neighborhood or a different price range?
If you feel like you are “settling” for a home because you wonder should we sleep on it, then you probably are settling for less and should not buy that home. Sleeping on it has a way of opening that window of opportunity for the non-indecisive home buyer. You know, that other couple you spotted getting out of their agent’s car at the home showing.
Despite what your parental authorities told you when handing out all of those awards in grade school, you’re not that special or different from anybody else. Neither am I. Other buyers have the same hopes, dreams and fears that you do, and the same parameters. If you are attracted to a home, other buyers are, too. If you don’t buy it, they will, and when you wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, energized and fully committed, that home will be pending.
Don’t Shoot Yourself in the Foot When You Make an Offer on a Sacramento Home
Buyers who make an offer on a new listing should discuss the price with a Realtor.
The trouble with making an offer on a home is many buyers judge the value of the home by the sales prices of surrounding homes and not the comparable sales. They do not seem to understand that the gray house with the remodeled kitchen and additional 500 square feet is worth many thousands more than the home they can really afford to buy, which is the brown house, two blocks over, without the remodeled kitchen and 500 square feet less.
You might read this and say to yourself: it makes sense, why doesn’t it make sense to the buyer? And it’s because they don’t look at it this way. They see 6 or 7 homes, all of which vary in size, configurations, location and condition, and in their mind those homes are all the same. They are homes for sale in Sacramento, and all they have to do is pick one and make an offer for less. I know agents are chuckling?over this scenario but it’s how buyers’ minds work. I hear it day after day from buyer’s agents who call on my listings.
I can also understand why buyer’s agents might not want to discourage them because to do so could alienate the buyer from the agent. Nobody wants to be told they don’t understand what they are doing. Agents often will urge them to make an offer, any offer, because once they get a signature on the contract, they hope the negotiations will continue.
But you can take a brand new listing in Sacramento that is attracting a lot of attention and buyers will still think it is OK to offer less. The problem is the seller is very unlikely to accept such an offer. Even if the buyer were to make an offer for FULL list price, the seller might not even take that kind of offer, and believe it or not, a seller is not required to. Nope, no law.
Often I get buyer’s agents who say their buyer wants to make an offer just prior to an open house because they are worried another buyer at the open house will want their home and swipe it. Yet, they often make an offer that the seller cannot or will not accept. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Bottom line, if the buyer wants to make an offer, it helps to determine market conditions, assess the competition for the home, and best of all, to consider the comparable sales.
