Absolutely! I, as a real estate agent, have given offers that have offended people, but everyone is trying to get a deal now. I had a couple look at a house for $679,900 and offer $620,000. As an agent, I explained that it was too low, but they insisted and I had to present the offer. It was rejected and my people waited a few weeks to come back with another offer. Since your house is new to the market, either stand firm on the price (if it is reasonable), or come back with a slightly lower counter. By slightly lower, I mean a few thousand dollars. I have had clients refuse offers all together and I have said back to agents that it was way too low. They came back with a more reasonable offer.

Pam

It's not smart to be "offended." Remember that this is a business deal, and a low offer is not meant as a personal affront.

The last time I made a low offer on a house, the seller came back with a counter offer that was only $2,000 less than his listing price. This sent me the message that while he wanted to engage me in the process, he was nonetheless not willing to stray too far from his asking price.

We eventually negotiated a deal.

Under current market conditions in most places right now, ignoring an offer altogether, and not countering at all, is probably a bad idea. You have nothing to lose by countering at a price just slightly lower than what you are asking, and seeing where the negotiations go from there.

we are sending them a counter offer, the best counter offer we can do, if they send back another counter offer, we will reject it... We want to do business honestly, not a mind game, maybe i am not up for this cruel world :-) Anyway, what makes me feel more offended than the price is that the buying agent wrote a note to my listing agent saying "this is the best offer, make it work so that we don't have to work too hard"??? DUMP

We made an initial offer about 6% lower than the asking price on the house we bought last year. Our seller refused and countered higher and we re-countered at 5.5% of his asking price, he didn't accept that offer and we walked away and started looking elsewhere. After he realized that he'd have to continue to pay to carry the house he came back and accepted our offer a few days later. We closed in 10 days and he saved another month's cost of carrying his empty house. If he had been offended and not negotiated we would have walked and he might have had to carry the house for several more months. As it is, we all came out happy, met out wonderful seller and our happily living in our house.

Yes, we did when we were selling our 1st house. The "buyer" apparently had been to one of those "no money down" seminars & was trying their suggestions. Not only was her offer insultingly low she also wanted all the money in our escrow & us to pay all closing costs. We refused to counter at first but when our agent insisted we did counter by upping our price to her. We also told our agent that her agent was banned from our house. The reason we did this is because the "buyer" happened to work in the same company as our next door neighbor. The "buyer" didn't know that this co-worker was our neighbor & was telling everyone at work about how her agent guided her in making the requests in her offer & how he had told her she was going to get a steal in our deal.

I realize that negotiation is part of it but the key is good faith negotiating. In that case there was no good faith on her side. We later sold the house for very close to our asking price & without giving away everything in our escrow.

I would not be insulted by an offer 5-6% below listing price in the current market. I would be thrilled quite frankly! then again I am on the market longer than you are at 10 days. :)

My house had been up for sale for three days. Inventory was low and prices were rising. I had priced accordingly. I got an offer (from someone with a real estate license, but not a practicing realtor, from what I could tell) at 20-25% below asking.
I was not offended, just amused, as she obviously thought I was an idiot. I was selling FSBO. I called her and politely declined and did not counter, simply because the offer was so far from asking and the listing was new.
My holding cost were low because the house was paid off.
She did eventally buy it - at 3% below asking and I was glad that I had been polite with my refusal (even though I thought of her as "crazy lady" to myself.)

boopadaboo wrote: I would not be insulted by an offer 5-6% below listing price in the current market. I would be thrilled quite frankly! then again I am on the market longer than you are at 10 days. :)

Same here--at 71 DOM today I would be thrilled with ANY (well, *almost any) offer. An offer is at least a jumping off point, you can counter and then hopefully negotiate.

Try to think of your current house as a product, a commodity that is for sale, and leave emotions (like being "offended") out of it. (This is easier said than done, I know.) Naturally the potential buyer wants to get the best price for the product he/she is buying.

We sold a house in MD last fall. The offer came through at about two weeks on the market, and was about 3% under our asking price, which was already at the bottom of comps. We had been in the house only 1.5 years, and had put a tremendous amount of money into improvements as we intended to be there long term. This was at the beginning of the changing market, and we were the first owners in the area to *not* receive a full price offer.

At that time, it would have been easy to be offended, but we decided to sit on it a few days rather than react emotionally. I was doing marketing for a real estate office, and was seeing the changing tide first hand. DH stays up on the financial markets as well. We decided that taking advantage of a relatively quick sale (we closed in a month) in an uncertain market, and being able to move on with our lives, was more important.

We made the right decision for us, because comparable homes in the area were *still* on the market into this spring. They did sell, but after several price drops. So in terms of the big picture, it worked out.

We want to do business honestly, not a mind game

I don't see how the buyers are playing a mind game. They made you an offer and asked for some excluded items to be included. You don't like the offer so counter. It is just business, there is no mind game involved.

BTW, what are you excluding that the buyers want included in the deal?

I don't see anything in the OP that is insulting. Our first offers are typically 10% below the asking price. We've also negotiated for many "don't stay" items. It's a starting point. The longer you sit on that house, the less insulting any offer will be to you.

Good luck.

Gloria

Offended because someone liked your house enough to tender an offer?

What about all the people who walk through and do not offer? Those are the people that should offend you. They did not feel your house was worthy of an offer (for whatever reason). Someone who makes an offer is not offensive, no matter what the offer. As gardenspice pointed out they may be amusing or crazy, but they are not offensive.

We want to do business honestly, not a mind game
If you really want to "do business" take offended out of the emotional equation.

Now it looks like I do offend someone on the board, which I don't intend to do. I just wonder how it worked out in the end for you, those who feel offended to an offer. It doesn't mean that I am not willing to work w/ the buyer, I do, and as I later posted, the price doesn't offend me as much as the attitute of the buying agent.

Those people who did walk thru my house and did not offer, surprisingly I don't feel offended 'cause my house doesn't work for them. What I consider great probably doesn't worth much to them. But for someone who care and wants the house, pls do a "good faith" negotiation.

I appreciate those posts that say it does work out in the end for them, either as buyer or seller, and that I should learn to appreciate the offer instead of feeling offended 'cause there are houses sitting on the market for long w/o offer. Thx.

thuha, I sincerely doubt you offended anyone here. :-) I think offers are all a matter of perspective, and a positive perspective can make a stressful situation .... less stressful.

Good luck with your sale.

I bought my house 13% below asking and had the seller pay $3000 in closing costs, and I put up a ridiculously small escrow. That the place was 150 DOM had something to do with it. :)

P.S. In hindsight, I overpaid. I shouldn't have offered more than about 18% below asking.

Our house sale closed on Friday. We asked 425k, our buyers offered 400k (5.8% less than asking), but responded to our 420k counter with a big jump up, 415k, which we accepted. This was 3.5% less than asking. Their first offer came in at 6 DOM.
We were pleased.

Coming from someone who does what your buyer is doing... It's not a mind game. It's negotiation. We're trying to get your house for the lowest price possible and you're trying to sell it for the highest price possible. Eventually we'll find some point we can both live with. I promise, we're not trying to hurt your feelings but it sounds like this buyer has you right where I'd want you... Worn down and stressed out after 10 days on the market.

I know how you feel. We had a house on market a few years back at $259,900.00. A couple from out of state looked at it for 2.5 hours at least the first time. And about an 1.5 the second time. They offered $199,00.00-yes, I was offended (sorry, I can't lie, it was a great house and location)-they wasted their time and mine-we didn't even counter-offer and we never heard from them again.

About 2 weeks later, we had two other couples wanting our house at same time and got asking price.

There are people out there that will have the nerve to try. I guess you can call it negogiation, but, we felt they insulted our intellegence that they thought we were stupid enough to fall for it.

Selling a house is a business transaction.
Do not take anything personally.
I buy 'distress' properties, 'old lady' house, and sometimes house sthat just need a serious upgrades. How bout built in 1972 and ZERO upgrades. Shag carpet in dayglo colors (matted badly - it is over 30 years old). A full 1972 kitchen in avacado. The refrigerator is original (stil holds 40 degrees but has a problem freezing ice). I paid ~15% under asking after almost 60 days on msrket. Spent about $45,000 and sold for a nice profit in 8 months.

Sellers sdo not set the prices, buyers do.
Depending on the market you may want to wait alittle while, but if it is slow do not forget carrying costs (principle, interest, taxes, and insurance - PITI).

I don't think I would ever be offended by an offer. I might be taken aback by one and might reject it out of hand. Even then, I would counter alhtough I might come down just a tiny amount.

We recently sold our house in area where average DOM for sold houses is about 140. We had been on the market for about 90 days with one $10k price reduction. We were very fairly priced. Buyers offered us about 96% of our asking price. We countered at about 97.5% and they accepted (average in our subdivision is about 97% of listing price). We did later credit them more at closing as inspection revealed a need to make an unexpected foundation repair.

Sellers do not set the prices, buyers do.

This is so true, but most sellers don't understand it.

We made an offer of $420,000 on a house that was listed at $475,000. The home had great bones and at one time was a very cared for house, but it had been neglected for a number of years to the point where we could see mold in the basement. The garage was so piled with junk that we couldn't step into it, and the people were not living there but had not cleaned out the refrigerator or cabinets before leaving. EWWWW

Needless to say it was disgusting. Part of our offer was that we would remove anything the sellers didn't want (they obviously had trouble packing their stuff) including an old oil tank.

Why would we want such a house? The one thing going for it was location--one of the prettiest, wealthiest streets in our town, and surrounded by well-cared for houses worth probably $100,000 more. It had a great floorplan with spacious rooms, cherry cabinetry, and a certain amount of curb appeal based on the style of the house (brick tudor-ish). We already had friends in the neighborhood.

Our offer was rejected outright. If they had met us 1/2 way we would have bought it. I found out later that it sold (many months later) for $450,000. If they had countered to us they could have sold it then. We found a better house anyway.

This was a hot market in many locations--it is rapidly turning cool and will continue to do so--because interest rates are going up, gas prices are outrageous and take money out of the budget that could go to mortgage payments. So before you start getting offended at offers for any reason bear in mind that some buyers have sold their homes at below their asking price. They would be good buyers for you because you don't have to wait for them to sell their house.
So sure you will counter offer--pleasantly. But first find out about them, are they prequalified, have they sold their house, are they going to use it as a rental, are they local or fresh from Iowa? That way you will put their offer in context. Personally I always considered the first offer like the first robin of spring. No offers ever tells you something is wrong either with the market or your listing price, etc.
Buyers set the price because until a buyer offers and a willing seller sells--we don't know what the market is for that house. You just do your own job --if you are a seller you try to get as much as possible --more than its worth if possible-the buyer tries to get it for as little as possible. Some buyers feel like they are a dummy if they don't make an initial offer a lot lower. Don't forget they have friends who give them goofy advice, or they read these real estate books. They might faint if you said yes
Its not personal--its just business. Don't forget this is the biggest business transaction you & the buyer probably will have for years.

I had a KO contract on a home, sellers had originally listed at 309K, had dropped to 284K by the time I found it. 65 DOM. I offered 255K (fair, via the comps). After some back & forth, we agreed on 270K. Had the KO contingency for 60 days (twice at 30 days each). During this time, I'm dropping the price of my own home so it'll sell (boy, is it a stagnant market where I am & my price drops are making their house not as affordable for me). When the 2nd contingency expired, they were willing to extend another 30 days. I appreciated that, but needed them to drop another 5K down to 265K. They refused, I walked. Their house goes back on the market at 278K w/3K carpet allowance. They have a lot of competition (19 others homes for sale in their SD that range in price from 200K to 299K) and new construction going up literally in their backyard. I admit I fantasize that they'll change their mind and drop price (I'm fully lender-ready, just need to sell and I'm willing to aggressively do so, even to dropping my price more). I also fantasize that their decision keeps 'em awake at night :P

In a way it's a good thing, because in the past 3 months the market's turned in my favor as a buyer and there are a lot of nice homes out there - I'm now looking at places around 240K that are comparable & will probably low-ball my next offer as well. I'd rather take the chance of offending a seller with a low offer - since there's always a chance they'll accept.

As a seller, I would always counter, even if it is just to restate the asking price, or raise it, based on give-backs at closing. What do you lose?

We had an offer on the last house we sold which was 10% below asking, after a couple of days on market. We countered with the asking price. This told the buyer that we were willing to talk to them, but we thought they weren't in the ballpark. They accepted our full-price counter.

"As a seller, I would always counter, even if it is just to restate the asking price, or raise it, based on give-backs at closing. What do you lose?"

An open offer that must be withdrawn if another comes along.
If you counter be sure to put a time limit on the contract.

"As a seller, I would always counter"

Isn't it better in some situations not to respond though? You can always place a counter-offer later on... I mean, if I got a no-time-limit offer after 2 DOM, I think I might want to sit on it for a week or so to see what other offers I might get.

I find it incredible that anyone would not put a time limit on an offer. Personally, I would try to give only 48 hours, even less if the circumstances permit.

"I find it incredible that anyone would not put a time limit on an offer."

As do I, but when I bought my house my agent refused to do it. This was a buyer's agent, not a dual agent. I just about went and found a new agent over the issue.

"I find it incredible that anyone would not put a time limit on an offer."

We had a prospective buyer do that to us, and it cost them the house. We were selling a desirable house in a mild seller's market and expected the house to go quickly. The first offer came in the weekend we listed and was disappointingly low. We felt confident we would have another offer or two within the week, so we just sat on the first one and stalled "thinking it over". We had two more offers within three days and were able to negotiate a much higher price with the second bidder.

Had the first offer contained a time limit, we'd have probably countered with something and met in the middle at $5K or so less than we got a few days later.

Buyers need to bid low because the asking price doesn't tell you what the sellers are thinking. (They may be thinking "Wow it would be amazing if I got the asking price" or they could be thiniking "This house is worth so much more. I don't know why I agreed to list it so low".)

The seller's response usually clarifies their position. If they counter they can either say I'm not budging (1% price drop) or that they are willing to negotiate (higher price drop).

I recently offered about 10% less than asking price for 300+ DOM house. They countered w/ a 1% reduction and worse terms (the clear message behind their counter was that they weren't willing to negotiate much). I didn't want the house if I couldn't get it at my price so I walked away (which send them back a clear message).

My point is that offers, counter offers and lack of offers send messages. I would say that sellers should always counter at least once just to clarify how firm they are on their price. Just make sure your counter sends the right message.

Thx for all your posts. It's my 1st time as the seller, and I attach to this house eventhough we only live here for a short time, so I am a bit emotional, and rather to say, I didn't see a counter offer at 5% lower than asking price as talking to people I know around here. Eventhough the market is cool somewhere, houses in my neighborhood have been sold for more than the asking price last couple months still. Anyway, we definitely do a counter offer, but probably I didn't tell you the whole story. Besides the price, the note from the buying agent, the offer is not serious since they don't have preapproval letter, which we have waited for 48hrs and still not received it yet. When my agent called, the buying agent said that he has it on hand and about to fax it, but he had a call and got to go, haha, what does it mean? We decide that we don't consider this offer seriously, and this is just the beginning of the process, I will let my "offended" feeling fly away... Thx.

Glad I ran into and read this thread.

It definitely reinforces my intent to sell "Dutch Auction" style.

Anyone that doesn't like the current price can wait the requisite days to offer the price they feel it is worth.

All they have to do is wait "One more day".

Thuha:

If you think you know stress from trying to sell your house after 10 days on the market, think about what anyone who is interested in a house will go through because they hope it will stay in the market for "one more day" in order to reach a price they feel it is worth.

With any luck, someone will go mad and ballistic and garner additional publicity for the house that I will sell "Dutch Auction" style.

Of course there will already be plenty of publicity for this unconventional style of selling even before the sale starts.

I love emotional people in business situations as they will always collapse to their own disadvantage and sometimes to my advantage.

Ruudman

As a person who had been interested in buying a new home for quite a while before I got serious, I did a lot of investigating. Last summer I went to open houses and studied the closings in the neighborhoods we were considering. One day I came upon an open house that that had good bones. But I also saw a lot of nasty wallapaper, some old carpet and an awkward family room. They were asking 329,900. It was July and even though they had already moved I knew they probably had unrealistic expectations. September arrived, school had started and our real estate market slows down. We sent an offer of 280,000, 15% below asking price. We thought we had started a negotiation. They didn't even respond to our offer. But I did see on the MLs that they lowered their price 5,000 the next day. That irritated me. Could they not even sent that back as an offer? So we said let it sit and we will check it out a month later. A month later I decided I didn't want the headache of remodeling, and that house did not sell unitl Dec. for 305,000. Exactly the price we would have have gone up to. i knew the market better than the seller. Another situation was we tried to by a house with a more that reasonable offer.(again overpriced). They turned us down explaining that they needed to make money out of the deal. They pulled the house off the market. Six months later the bank forclosed on that one.

Ah the pre-approval letter.
Does anyone actually believe they are worth the paper they are printed on?

After two days on the market, I got a call from an agent, clients in tow, from the sidewalk wanting a look. I let them in, although we certainly weren't looking our best. That afternoon, they offered approximately 75% of our asking price. (what? sounded like what they had in their checking account!) We countered, coming down a couple of thousand dollars. After a little dickering, we ended up $6000 short of our starting price. Offer accepted, in a dead market, three days after listing. We closed last Friday.

I don't think you should ever be insulted or offended; any buyer of any product wants the best price possible. Counter.

Thuha~ If not this buyer, there will be another one. Just don't be too quick to dismiss your potential buyers. As others have stated, they are just hoping to buy for a price they are happy with. You will likely do the same when you find a new home to purchase. It is nothing personal, as so many have said... it really is business.

We have, over the last several years, put low bids on three different homes. Why... they just weren't "perfect" or even close to it for the asking price. The sellers all declined. One sat on their house another year, one sat on their house almost 2 years (not kidding!), and the 3rd is actually still for sale (for their credit, they did actually negotiate (unlike the first 2), but we just can't get to the same price point, so we moved on.

The house we currently own was a different story. We bought for sale by owner. She told us the asking price and we agreed... it was absolutely worth it. We love our land.. tall 100 year old trees, a creek going thru the middle of our property, barns and outbuildings, mountains to the east and a huge lake to the west, on a quiet little country road with 2 other homes... one a vacation home and the other a single older woman= quiet and private... oh, and an old and crummy house. No worries... we're building a new house on the property and will have the old one torn down or burned. Meanwhile, we did have it remodeled some before moving in (it was that bad) and are still living in it 4 years later. For us, it took the right "land" to pay the full price.

Good luck to you. I do hope you counter... just look at it as a business deal!

Yes, we definitely do the counter. But before we seriously consider this offer, we want to make sure the buyer is serious as well, so we ask them to submit the pre-approval letter. It might not worth anything but at least we know they got approved for whatever amt and we can go from there. I know some buyers go around and put in offer while they have no clue how much they can afford simply because some agents don't care much to guide their buyers. So, 48hrs passed and haven't seen anything. We are moving on. We did let the buyer's agent know that we can't do anything till they submit that piece of paper :-)

We never got preapproved before we bought our current home. Until the day we put in the offer we were not sure we wanted to pay cash or mortgage.

We put in our offer, they accepted, we escrowed $10K, got a mortgage the next day and closed in 32 days (really fast for NYS).

We eventually purchased the 131st house we looked at. We were serious buyers but being preapproved was something we did not bother with.

"Ah the pre-approval letter.
Does anyone actually believe they are worth the paper they are printed on?"

Depends on the lender doing the pre-approving.

There are some very good advice in this message. I wonder if sellers are still rejecting offers that they consider low in this market?

Man, I WISH I had gotten 95% offers to get insulted about! LOL Most houses in my town are closing at 95% this last year, so we priced at 5% over our target price and a little more than 6% over our bottom-line price, and asking is about 6% below our closest comp. It would have been pointless to list at our base price because pretty much no one pays asking price here, it's almost a challenge to some people to see how far below asking they can get. We had two written offers at 30 and 35 DOM, one at 93% and one at 90% (bargain hunter!); we negotiated up to the 95% which was our target number, but both buyers then turned around and demanded more $ for this-that-and-the-other, bringing the price down to around 91.5% which was simply not acceptable. We know that bargain-hunter buyer was not overly serious about wanting the house, he was just trying to see how little he could get it for, and let's not talk about the other buyer. :-) When I told our new realtor about the offer history, she was gobsmacked that our current realtor had rolled over for it. We are at 75 DOM now and not stressing that we should have accepted bargain-hunter's "deal" because we could sit for several more months before we lost enough money in carrying costs to equal that extra 3.5%. Next week we are listing with our new realtor who is known to be much more aggressive than our current one - I asked her flat out if we should lower the price and she said absolutely not.

I do admit that we lowballed an offer on one house at 80% of asking, but it had a LOT of problems (we estimated that it would have cost us a good 15% of the asking price to bring it all the way up to snuff, and that's not including pure cosmetics like painting over scary colors) and had been on the market for many, many months. Also, it was a bank-owned property so there weren't really anyone's feelings to hurt in the process. :-) We didn't get it and I am really, really glad we did not because I found out later it had far more serious issues than we thought it did, and it would have been the House From Hell.

We're paying a little bit more than our buying agent thinks we ought to be for our new house, partially because we did not want to risk losing it to someone else while we were d***ing around countering and re-countering because we'd already had one house snatched out from under us that way, and we knew the seller wasn't going to be able to go much lower if at all anyway. It is light-years better than anything else we had seen and we weren't willing to let it get away for an amount we could come up with to add to the down payment so we could keep our monthly payment where we wanted it. Our agent was sure she could have gotten us another 1-1.5% off, but we're okay with 97.5% of asking.

I offered $490k on a house listed at $549 last week. They basically said "bug off" so I went back with $520k. they came back at $545. Down $4k.

I thought selling was bad, buying is just as stressful and nuts it seems like to me anyway! I have a feeling I am going to be renting for awhile.

In todays market, the buyer has the seller by the balls and knows it. I also think it's realistic to say buyers are of the opinion that a seller is desperate, therefore any offer, even a ridiculous one, will be accepted.

What it boils down to is how bad someone wants the house, and at that point becomes an emotional issue~that's when you get the 'balls' in your court. IMO, you have to 'make' someone fall in love with your home, ie;emotional. This is 'my perspective', as well as two friends who have purchased within the last year~the realtor I talked with last night also backed me on this.

I suggest you stand back and take a long hard look at your home~are *you* in love with it? If not, how could someone else be. Don't give anyone reasone to offend with a ridiculous offer. Makes your home as close to a showplace as you can reasonably afford. IMO, that's what sells a home. ;o)

Real estate is regional

Not all markets are in the tank. Not all markets have been seller's markets the last five years. Not all markets are buyer's markets today. Your market may be in the tank but mine is not. Seeing posts like "it's a buyer's market", "buyer's can get what they want" are just frustrating. Maybe in your market they can, but not in my market.

Best advice to a buyer/seller - find out the state of your market. A 90% offer may be just fine-and-dandy in one market and anything less than a 98% offer may be laughed at in another market. Check out the comps in your market. There are unrealistic sellers and unrealistic buyers out there. If a seller is well priced according to comps, they are more likely to reject a low offer, and if a seller is completely out of line with their price, they are more likely to be "low balled".