This Miscalculation Cost My Buyers a Home

“Our offer was rejected,” I told my buyer, Janie, on the phone one evening after she and her finance Chris put in an offer for a small ranch they loved in one of the area neighborhoods.

“Are you kidding me?  What?  Aren’t they coming back with a counter offer, something?” She was so upset, and I was in as much disbelief as she was that it was a done deal.  We lost out on the house they wanted and that was that.  There was nothing I could do to change it.

The crazy thing was this was not 2005 when buyers were writing deposit checks and over-the-asking-price offers at the open house.  This was 2010, when prices were spiraling down and getting a loan was like pulling teeth.  Properties’ days on market were triple that of two year earlier so how come our offer was rejected?  What home seller in their right mind would say no to highly qualified buyers?

A home seller with two other offers, one of which was for the asking price from buyers no less qualified.

This was my fault, I gave my buyers some bad advice.  When we discussed the price we should offer, it didn’t occur to me there would be two other offers, and that the seller would not try to negotiate a bit.  The seller’s listing broker said other offers were coming, but from past experiences with this broker, I had reason to doubt it.  Besides, everything was just sitting there…housing inventory was at a high.  I was representing buyers in a buyer’s market, we had the upper hand.

Wrong.  It may have been a buyer’s market, but regardless of the real estate market conditions, the seller is the one who sets the asking price of his or her home and sometimes they set it low enough to attract buyers to the table the first day on market.  My miscalculation was to look at the whole market and be influenced by all the news and depressing office chatter around me rather than focus solely on this specific property and how well it was priced compared with other like properties.

Had I done this I would have acknowledged that this was a hot property and not been so cynical.

It is hard to believe that there are hot properties, but it is up to your agent and you to recognize when you see one.  The problem is that in a down market all homes look overpriced and in an up market, everything is hot.  We’ve gone from one extreme to the other.  But to make good decisions, focus on the specific neighborhood in which you want to buy and ignore national and even statewide statistics.  They are meaningless noise in your quest.

As for Janie and Chris, they didn’t fire  and referred their friends to me.  We found a great home they loved just as much.

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