When it comes to selling homes the most exciting time is when you have an opportunity to look at one or more offer. It doesn’t happen on every transaction, but you’d be surprised to learn how many times multiple offers come forward even after a house has been on the market for a month or longer. The goal is to put the house on the market, show it for a week or so and generate enough interest to set a date to look at offers.
This week I helped a buyer make an offer on a property in Novato where we were 1 of 8! Those are never good number for buyers. We went over asking and didn’t get it because someone went ‘wildly’ over asking. What is wild? I’d say in the neighborhood of $100,000 or more is pretty nutty but people do it. Sometimes homes are intentionally priced very low to generate multiple offers. The risk is that the seller receives only an asking priced offer when they were expecting more. They can decide not to accept the offer and raise their price, but buyers don’t generally favor such tactics.
We won’t know the final price on the house my buyer bid on until it closes, but I can just imagine the terms. Perhaps the offer was all cash with no loan or physical inspection contingencies? Other than a chimney inspection the seller didn’t do inspections up front so unless it was a contractor buying the home, they probably have inspection contingencies.
When I started in real estate sales, back when dinosaurs lived in the swamps of Terra Linda, the prevailing method of property preparation was not to do seller inspections up front. The thought was that a buyer would make an offer and then potentially negotiate on anything they found during their inspections. Along with putting down a deposit, paying for inspections, and making plans to move the odds where pretty good the buyers would go try to make the deal work by negotiating on deficiencies found during their investigations.
These days it’s more common to get all inspections up front. It gives buyers confidence when they can look under the hood prior to making an offer, not just kick the tires. It also becomes less likely they’ll try to negotiate after their own typically redundant inspections. A buyer can still get their own inspections, and in fact their brokers will always advise buyers to get their own inspections. However, buyers will still forego inspections sometimes to make their offers more appealing. You get an offer over your asking price with no loan and no inspections contingencies and as a seller all you need to do move out and wait for closing day. Earlier this year I looked at 6 offers with one seller and we took the best offer that came in with all cash, over asking and no contingencies in a 10-day escrow.
As an agent I never expect that, but it’s pretty sweet when it happens! That’s why I like offer days best of all, at least when I representing the seller.