I mentioned yesterday that we had received our first offer on The Lake House…but that there was a good bit of distance between the buyer’s offer and the minimum sale price we would accept…
As I mentioned, we decided that we’d go back to the buyer with a take-it-or-leave-it counter-offer at our minimum acceptable terms, and see if they wanted the house badly enough that they’d come up to that price.
And they did…
They ultimately increased their offer price by about $10,000, dropped the amount of closing costs they were asking for by about $1500 and switched to using our mortgage broker and closing attorney to handle their purchase. Given that they were so willing to make these concessions, and given that we now don’t have to finish staging the property, take pictures or market it, we’re okay with coming down a good bit off our list price to get to a deal.
They still have 10 days for their due diligence, and we’re not scheduled to close until February 25 (another concession we made), so there’s a lot that can go wrong between now and then, but we’re hopeful that we’ll actually that this deal closed.
I’ll post an update once the inspections and appraisals get rolling…
Good deal J Scott,
Hopefully they’ll come through even through Feb 25 is a good bit out. Hopefully they are “emotionally attached’ to the house now, makes it harder for them to back out…
Hey Stefan –
Agreed! Emotionally attached is good, but financially attached is even better! 🙂
Once they spend some money on an inspection/appraisal and once their earnest money goes hard, I start to feel a lot more comfortable. Buyers in this price range don’t like to throw away $1000…
[…] Real Estate Investing Tips: What You Should Know About Receiving Offers Part 2 Posted by: claire | Category: Flipping Houses, Real Estate Investing, Rehabbing Houses […]
Congrats. Why the long closing time? Do you retain the ability to keep marketing the property? (not sure if that is a problem in GA) Will you be taking backup contracts? Too much time to have things taking a turn for the worse… and the property will be vacant all those 7 or 8 weeks.
Good luck with the closing, and congrats again.
Way to go! Sometimes it pays to hold your ground.
Andres –
The long closing is not optimal, but was one of the requirements that these buyers had. Since they were flexible in most other aspects of the deal (switching broker/closing attorney, price, closing costs, etc), we agreed to this stipulation. As for the house sitting empty, it’s a good neighborhood, so that part doesn’t really bother me…