What is the Best Strategy for Negotiating with Home Buyers?
Whether you have one offer on the table or a bidding war for your property, part of selling your home is negotiation with buyers. Thinking through your strategy and goals helps prevent the process of selling your home from becoming emotional. Working with an experienced Realtor team gives you a buffer, but you’ll still be making all final decisions.
So, You Have an Offer…
Once offers start rolling in you’ll need to have an idea of how and when you want to respond to them. It’s tempting to reply right away, but it’s not always the best course of action. Letting the buyer’s agent know that all offers will be considered and responded to on a given day is one way to give yourself time as well as set a reasonable expectation. Some offers will come with an expiration date. If you get an offer that expires before your set consideration date it might be worth making an exception and responding early, but only if it’s a fantastic offer. Otherwise, ignoring the date and responding along with all other offers at the end of the week is still a good move.
Plan how you intend to counter offers that are below asking price, or that include concessions. Depending on the status of the property, one of the aspects that we like to sue is pointing out everything that will come up on the property inspectors report when showing the home. If the roof is old and they know it before they make their offer, it’s a lot harder to ask for a concession during negotiations. As a seller, you must always disclose accurately.
Can You Expect a Bidding War?
Whether or not your home will draw multiple buyers into a bidding war has more to do with the overall market conditions than anything else. So, no, we can’t promise anything. We can strategize to encourage it. A competitive listing price is a good start, and could do the trick on its own. Holding an open house within a week of your listing going live is another good enticement. We’ll inform all prospective buyers before and during the open house that we won’t be reviewing offers until it ends.
Seeing other prospective buyers can create a sense of urgency and encourage people to make their best offers. Keep in mind that no one making an offer will know how many offers you received. So, even if your open house only brings one offer you have an edge when negotiating further.
The Kern Team at your side throughout the negotiation process means you can rely on our experience to advise you. Let’s get your home sold.
