Advice Needed: Selling a House
 

Long story short I have had my house listed for a while and my wife and I got an offer on it today. We are about 20K apart on asking and offer. Do I counter offer? I have never dealt with any of this before and just want some opinions. It's an acreage that we have had listed about 4 months. We are moving to another acreage and don't HAVE to sell the place, as we have had several offers from people wanting to rent out listed place. Anyway give me your feedback. TIA

I think that classic negotiating tactics say that you should never be the person who says "okay". You always ask for something else and only stop when the other person says "okay".

That said, the world economy has collapsed and your offer may be the last real estate offer ever made on Planet Earth, at least until the intelligent apes take over.

My wife says that we should take the money and run, but my mind says that we need to counter offer. It really is a nice acreage and we are not asking for the moon. Thanks for the response.

You have to counter offer if you want to sell. The market is down and the buyer is giving you a low ball offer coming in at $20K below asking price, provided you are asking a fair price from a recent appraisal or comps. If you don't have to sell it, I would not accept an offer lower than what you are ok with. Certainly not $20K below your asking price(again, provided you have listed at today's value).

counter offer.

Give them a counter offer 20K more than your listing price

(warning - I'm not in sales or real estate. I've just seen a few movies)

Housing market sucks right now, probably the worst time to sell a house. You have to counter offer IMO

they're trying to steal it, screw that.

My first thought was, if you don't have to sell and can rent it out, then don't sell. That being said, you should definately counter.

Counter offer. The worst they can do is either say no or come back with their own counter offer. If you don't have to sell it.....then you hold all of the power.

20 years of negotiating.....counter....

You probably didn't even sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night did you?

I'm a licensed Realtor in New Jersey FYI. (Just for a background of how i'm pulling this out my ass)

If you have a decent Realtor then you should have an idea of what your house should actually sell for. Based on similar listings sales etc.

I might counter offer with the same offer you had the house listed for. Have the Realtor say that its reasonably priced and priced to sell. And that you really weren't intent on dropping the price. The other Realtor will call bullshit but hopefully raise by 5-10k. Then i'd just settle and be happy you sold the house in this market hahaha.

Countering will also make them feel better. If you say okay, they'll spend the next thirty years thinking that they should've offered you less. So you're not doing it for you, you're doing it for the buyer.

Ditto on what has been said. Especially if you don't have to sell, this isn't the market to be selling. Hold out for what you are comfortable with, there is no reason to accept a low ball offer in this market if you don't need to.

Funny chit. That's what I think. I'm telling you guys this guy is really interested and we're not trying to sell him a bill of goods. Just want what this place is worth. My father sold it to me out of college to help me get my feet on the ground.

Why are you selling it if you don't need to? If you can afford to hang on to it while our economy sucks, you should hang on to it. JMO

Just bought a house in this market, and while it is definitely a buyers market, excellent properties are still moving. There's just a little more red tape over value with the lenders if your buyer is financing it. He probably expects a counter, but if you go back to the asking price, he may walk away.

Good luck!

COUNTER!

Don't give in....the housing market is fine in the midwest. Don't buy into the news about California, Florida, Arizona where the housing was inflated & is only adjusting right now. Housing in the midwest never got crazy so don't buy into the negative housing market stuff here in the midwest...now if you happen to live in California or Florida...different story.

Never accept the first offer.

When I'm buying, I offer low, hoping they'll counter about -%25 and I'll try to meet them close to the midpoint between my offer and asking price.

My instinct would be for you to counter at asking price -$5k....but I don't know the total, the property, how much you owe on it, how much its worth et al. rule of thumb.

It depends on what your asking price is. For example, if it's $100K, I'd tell them to pound sand. OTOH if it's around $500K then it's probably not unreasonable at all.

We have a sale
 

I countered half way in the middle and made a few concessions, but told him that it was my final offer. He replied to the realtor within 2 hrs. and bought our house. I am happy, and I am happy for him. He is a serviceman and I told my wife that I am going to buy him a flagpole for him. He has been in Irag kicking ass so that I can come on Chiefs Plantet and ask for advice. God Bless our Serviceman.

Good for you.

sounds like you got screwed.

I'm not confident of a true ass-raping unless the guy takes 3 days to get used to the pain.

Could not agree more. Someone tried to buy some property from my mom a few months back. They told her that it was a good price based on the market. It was...but why sell? Hell, the real estate market will improve. If you do not have to sell a piece of property now, why would you?

Trust me. I got what the place was worth. Eat a fatty and forget your name.

my girlfriend is quite fit, actually. But thank you for the advice.

Guess my reply was a little late :) Congrats. If you are happy, that is all that matter.

Thanks for the advice. By the way, you been out shed hunting yet??Even though you are a Hawkeye fan, we have no bad blood.

That's great news. My consulting fee is only $500, so it's a win for all of us.

if you don't have to do it then do not do it unless the offer is too good to pass.

No shed hunting yet...too busy, too much going on.

Maybe saturday. Its time.

an old car saleman addage.

I bought my first condo for about $70,000, and we knew it was a good deal when we bought it. It was in this gorgeous old mansion with a huge yard in a great part of town, and I happened to drive by right when they put them up for sale. I thought it was underpriced, so we jumped on it even though we weren't expecting to buy anything yet and hadn't even been in Denver a year. We actually bought two apartments in the place and combined them into one condo.

When my wife and I found a house we liked about 11 months later, we put the condo up for sale. Our Realtor looked at the place and said, "Oh, hey. I think another Realtor in my office has a client who'll want it. Let's ask $87,000."

The Denver market was really hot at that point, and sure enough, within a day we got an offer for $85,000 from the person, and the condo hadn't even gone on the market yet. We wanted the house so we accepted it, and were quite pleased since we'd owned the condo less than a year.

Two years later our buyer sold it for $140,000. Dang. I think our Realtor underpriced it.

This.

Excellent, hope it works out well for both of you.

I assume this was a pretty expensive house. I'm thinking about putting an offer down on a house they are asking 145K for, and if I offered 125K I think they would probably take a shit and throw it at me. I know the house hasn't been on the market long, so I don't know what to offer. I'm thinking about 136K and I would accept anything 140K and below. House is said to be appraised at 154K in 2008. ?

Don't offer an even number willi. Like 136,750...

On counter offers, I always will try something like -250 less than the halfway point I'm trying to work towards....

The key to a good deal is you have to be willing to walk away. If you decide the home is worth 130k, don't get pushed and pay 135 because thats their bottom dollar. Pick your price, work towards it, and be willing to walk away.

Sometimes, down the road if its not getting hits, they'll call you and say "will you still give 125"?

Your counter can always go up, but never get better for you.

I think some of the folks here are penny smart and pound foolish. I'm glad the OP was able to negotiate a deal, but sometimes a counter offer will result in a no sale. You have to know the market you are dealing with and what is your probable competition.

I know the last house we sold, we accepted the offer without a counter and I'm glad we did. We got what we expected we would for the house; it was a little under the asking price, but still above what we anticipated would be an initial offer. After the sale, we found out that the buyers were also looking at a brand new house where the builder was offering $100K off the asking price to get it sold.

Likewise, when we were looking to buy a house after selling that one, we were putting in an offer for a house and the builder countered. We told him to go screw himself because we had other houses we were interested in. He wound up selling it for significantly less than what we had offered after having to hold it and pay the interest on it till it sold 11 months later thereby costing him even more money.

Sometimes countering works, sometimes it doesn't....


Edit: I should clarify that this responce is in regards to selling in a buyers market.....

$136300 is a 6% reduction in the aasking price and is usually pretty much expected as the initial offer. If you would offer $136.5K you have a good chance of hitting your $140K target.

It's all relative right now. If you're getting a $20K discount on the place you're buying,it's a wash. If you're not (and why aren't you?), then you need to decide which place you really like better. You didn't say the price, so don't know if this is a 10% discount, 20% or what.

Personally, I think that real estate has gone below it's true value right now. It's not the price of the real estate but the availibility of the money to get one. If you want to get your true value, consider owner-financing to someone that can't get a loan. They'll pay 110% of your asking price. If you need the cash to buy the next place, counter.

One better way to counter - closing costs. Tell them to pay ALL closing costs and they can have it. Probaly worth $20K right there.

I have always been a believer in negotiating for the best price possible. I have bought two homes, but have never sold one. The first was a cheap fixer upper. I was 21 years old, a bachelor and wanted something for a starter home. This house was already cheap enough at $24,000, and I would have paid that, but in order to find the sellers bottom price, I low balled at $17,500. I was shocked when the seller accepted. I think your buyer was just doing the same thing to you. He was probably just as happy to pay what he did as you were to take it. Makes it a win-win IMHO.