Trying to buy on Long island. Offered 357k and 10k in good faith with 10k down on a holiday season listed at 349k and approved for 380k on a VA loan, but haven't heard back and feel like selling agent basically doesn't take me seriously. Am I mising something?
Posted May 4, 2019, 4:56 AM UTC
Holiday season = house. Fucking hell.
Do you have a realtor representing your interests or are you just going through the seller's realtor? You should always put an expiration date on offers.
I just went through the selling agent. Proving to be a bad idea, but we'll see.
It's almost always a bad idea to use the selling agent to buy.
Yes, thank you.
In the future you can put a defined expiration date on your offer. That way instead of sitting around uncertain, you know that on X date it's time to move on dot com.
As it stands, I would suggest moving on dot com and if you hear back then great, if you don't then you didn't miss out on anything else great.
That's basically my plan, but am I protected against anything shady? I know it's going to sound crazy, but the way the selling agent was acting about the whole situation made me think that she is hiding something. My speculation is that a friend of hers or another client wants the house but can't offer as much, and she is going to either not put mine through to the seller or urge the seller to reject on some trumped up grounds so that her special interest can get the place.
It's generally unknown and unknowable if there are nefarious conspiracies afoot, best not to worry about it, and best not to fall in love with any home until you have keys in hand and are owner of public record. Until that happens, the seller and listing agent don't owe you squat and you (effectively) aren't entitled to anything, including fair consideration of your offer.
Heard back, and they selling agent told me they went with an offer for less money? She said it was due to terms and conditions although I can't fathom what that would actually mean. I know they don't owe me anything, and there's nothing I can do about it except be annoyed. In the future I'll use an agent to represent my interests, even though I can still imagine the same thing happening. Thanks for the input.
Let's suppose your offer was for $500k with an inspection contingency. Really what that means is that inspection results come back and oh look it's price negotiation round 2 time. Your $500k offer might very well become a $485k offer, but now the home isn't on the market/MLS any more and the seller is no longer entertaining bids from multiple buyers, weakening their position relative to you, so the seller might feel like they have to take what amounts to an updated $485k offer.
Let's suppose the other offer was for $490k with no contingencies. Well shit, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, this person isn't contractually able to play the price negotiation round 2 game.
So really it's your nominal wiggly maybe $500k offer v a known factual can't budge $490k offer.
If you want it to sell with strong assurances that you're not going to deal with that weakened negotiating position, and are a seller, you might take the $490k offer over the $500k offer.
In my hot market, the solution some buyers take is to have it inspected before writing the offer, and build whatever inspection result concessions you want into the offer. This is of course frustrating because you as the buyer might end up getting 5 houses inspected ($2500) before your offer is accepted.