We received our third offer on The Poor House today…and we may be getting number four this afternoon…
We countered the second offer that we received last week, and because we weren’t very confident that the buyers would actually be able to close, we were pretty stringent on our counter. We countered close to full price, required them to use our mortgage broker, our closing attorney, close quickly, and put down a lot of earnest money. Not surprisingly, they decided they were no-longer interested in pursuing the offer. Just as well…
Today, we received Offer #3, from a couple who had seen the property about two weeks ago. They are first-time home-buyers, and while they loved the house, they have been struggling to decide if they’re ready to actually go through with a home purchase. Ultimately, their agent got them to put in an offer.
The offer is a bit lower than what we’d accept, they want us to get them a property survey, and they want a good bit in closing costs and a good bit of time for inspections and appraisals. On the good side, they are willing to close in about a month, which we like. Ultimately, we think we could make a reasonable counter-offer that both sides would probably think is fair.
But, before even seeing the offer, we spoke with an agent who showed the property to a buyer yesterday. This is the agent who represented the buyer for House #12, so we’ve worked with her before. Her buyer is all-cash (he received a lump sum from somewhere recently), and he indicated to his agent yesterday that he really loved our house, but didn’t give her a final answer on whether he was interested in making an offer.
If he does make a reasonable offer, we’d be thrilled. Because he is a cash buyer, we wouldn’t have to jump through the typical financing hoops, and he probably ask for much in closing cost assistance. He’d also likely be able to close a bit more quickly than a typical financed buyer. We expect to hear today whether he plans to put in an offer or not.
We have until tomorrow night to respond to Offer #3, so we’ll hold off until we find out if we’re getting Offer #4. I’ll have more of an update in the next couple days…
Great news!!! Get them to fight. On our California Association of Realtor forms we have an option that allows you to counter “multiple offers.” It basically is a check-box that says this offer is not binding until I sign it again because I have multiple offers. I check this on every offer, this allows me to have some flexibility as I do diligence on the buyer.