Our marketing blitz from last week on The Mini House was successful in getting about a dozen buyers through the house within a couple days, which was good. And while I would have liked to have gotten more, I’m still happy that we ended up with a single offer coming from that group.
The offer was much lower than our first offer, but is still reasonable and still would allow us to make our minimum profit target. The only issue is that after getting the offer, the agent suddenly became difficult to communicate with.
Specifically, we received the offer on Thursday evening. We sent back a counter-offer on Friday morning, asking for more earnest money and a quick appraisal (just in case we had more problems). Given that these were are only stipulations on the offer, we expected a quick acceptance.
Come Friday night, we hadn’t heard anything, so my wife called the agent, who acted annoyed that we were bothering her. She said she’d talk to her clients over the weekend and get back to us. As of Monday, we still hadn’t heard back from her, so my wife called her again. This time, she said she would talk to her clients later in the day and get back to us.
It’s now late Tuesday night, and we still haven’t heard anything. I don’t know if that means the counter-offer isn’t going to be accepted or if the agent/buyers are just dragging their feet for some unknown reason. Either way, we’re still marketing and showing the property to other buyers, so we’re not slowing down just because of this situation.
I’ll let you know when we hear something more…
Scott, glad to hear about the offer. I know you are successful at what you do, but I will remind you of an old fundamental. “The Sale is not complete until you Ring the Register”. Pretend like that buyer does not exist and immediately start a second round of marketing. Do not take a break. Be ferocious. Attack the marketing plan. Immediately. Plan another open house. If the offer works out, you can always cancel the open house and celebrate! BTW-Did the buyer come with a pre-approval letter?
Chris –
I completely agree with you…
We don’t even mark the house as “Pending” on the MLS until we get a closing scheduled. In other words, until a few days before the closing, the house is still showing up on the MLS, we’re still showing the house, taking backup offers, and doing some basic marketing.
Of course, we always disclose the situation to the buyers (that we already have an accepted contract), but when a contract falls through, we often have at least several agents/buyers that we can call who had expressed interest in the previous week or two.
For the life of me I can never understand why agents drop the ball at this point. Its like stepping up to the plate, hitting a single but refusing to run to first base. Hell, thats the easy part. Either way, good luck on this one.
Honestly, what reason could the agent have for dragging her feet? Can it be pure laziness?
Bilge, Scott –
I’m wondering if the buyers are having cold feet and the agent is just doing a very poor job of communicating with us, either because she feels bad or is concerned about telling us that the deal might not go through.
Regardless, I agree that the agent is dropping the ball and making herself look bad…
Regarding agent dragging her feet…my money’s on pure laziness. Been there too many times…just doesn’t make sense, but it happens a lot.
EXCELLENT advice from Chris Ranney above. Was thinking the same thing reading your post.
So what’s the latest? Rolling forward or moving on?
…jp