This is the house that received THIRTY offers last month.
My thoughts:
- The supply of houses priced under $700,000 is scarce, with overwhelming demand.
- This is all you’re going to get from now on, and it won’t get better. I feel sorry for the kids.
- My buyers offered $700,000 with 20% down and didn’t get a counter.
The listing agent didn’t round-trip it and the winner paid $730,000 and financed the purchase. How do you know if others would have made a better offer if you don’t include them?
When I’m the listing agent, I always counter every buyer – how will you ever know what they might pay unless you give them a chance???
Criminal that the listing agent just took whatever looked nice + moved on.
Crazy, if the listing agent had put in the effort + pressed for highest and best they probably could have funded their 3%.
We live in an environment where getting more than you expected is good enough.
It never occurs to agents that their laziness is preventing max money/top dollar sales.
There are class-action lawsuits pending against the industry over dumb stuff. The one that could stick is how seller representation is so lame and inefficient that sellers leave money on the table in virtually every sale (every non-JtR sale). But nobody has thought of that one yet.
When I’ve sold, I asked to see every offer.
Do you think this seller didn’t care enough to ask?
Good question – like all the questions by bubbleinfo readers!
Imagine the moment of impact, which is remarkably different depending if the sellers live in the house.
If they live there, they have been inconvenienced 100x by all the showings and they know it’s hot.
Sellers of vacant houses typically aren’t driving by every hour and, as a result, are relying on the listing agent’s report of activity. The lazy agents aren’t tracking it closely, though the lockboxes report every showing – they just want to hurry up and take an offer so they can go back to sleep.
In this case, the agent might have told the sellers that there were 30 offers, but must have shrugged off the majority and recommended that they only counter the “serious” buyers. He told me they countered the top 3-4 offers.
If you are a seller, doesn’t it sound like good advice?
When a listing agent does counter-offers, they do it to “clean up” an offer, which means to dictate the title and escrow companies to be used, and inflict stricter timelines for all contingency removals. This is what agents call, “expert negotiating”.
It NEVER occurs to them to pit the buyers against one another. I have never experienced any agent trying to run up the score like I do.