We received our fourth offer on The Red Garage House today…
As a reminder, our first offer was back in April, and that one fell through in mid-July, after months of underwriting hell, culminating in a low appraisal and the buyer losing his job. We put the house back on the market, and quickly got our second and third offers, on the same day. The offer we accepted fell through when the buyer got cold feet, and by that time, the buyer with the third offer had found another house.
So, after just a few days back on the market, here we are with offer #4…
The offer is a bit lower than we want, and there are a couple offer terms that we’d like to revise (closing date and inspection time-frame), but we’re planning to make a counter-offer, and hopefully the buyer will be willing to compromise. Funny enough, we received the offer early this morning, and my wife has been unable to get in touch with the buyer’s agent all day to make the counter-offer. Just another example of people in this business not caring much about their jobs…
But, that’s a completely separate rant… 🙂
I am sure that agent would be reachable when its time to collect the 3 points: ). My favorite quote from a buyers agent when speaking with me on the phone discussing HER clients slow closing: “I Want My Money.” Thats our nickname for this agent now, she’s shown several of our houses. What a tool.
Holy Moses, there are some really bad agents. The good news is that it seems most of the rotten ones have not survived the meltdown. I’ve not filed a complaint with the Colorado Real estate commission all year!
Jingle
You must be doing something right with your houses if you keep getting offers soon after putting the house back on the market. It’s amazing how many can fall through, you don’t realize all the hurdles that can trip you up just trying to sell a house to someone who wants to buy it.
Scott –
It truly amazes us how many buyers will put in offers without a prayer of being able to actually get their financing through. We’ve started having our buyers get “pre-approved” by our lender, which basically means that our guy pulls their credit and tells us if there’s a reasonable chance they’ll be able to close.
We’re also getting better at not setting closing dates far into the future; we’d rather do extensions if the buyer needs more time, but know early if there is going to be financing issues.
We don’t accept offers without the buyers showing a letter of pre-approval. That is becoming standard business these days.
– Hakrjak
Hak –
Even pre-approval letters don’t mean anything these days…see my post coming up tonight (House #12: Second Offer) for a great example!