You are ready to make an offer on a just listed home. Your real estate agent calls the listing agent of the property asking about any other offers and how best to proceed. Doing her job representing the seller, the listing agent says, “there has been a lot of interest and I think we might get four other offers not including yours.” So what does this mean and what do you do?
Will there really be other offers? How many? Are you being misled? How much should you offer? How can you still get the property without grossly overpaying?
The current real estate offer system is inherently flawed. First, even with identical offer prices, two offers are not the same. There are the issues of contingencies, financing and the like. Second, given the “silent auction” nature of the current offer system, there is no way to tell what offer price is just enough. It typically comes down the quality of your agent’s relationship with the listing agent and how well they can “probe” for information.
This inefficient, non-transparent process needs to change. Here’s my idea. The offer process should be open, with a level the playing field similar to how eBay works. Prospective buyer must sign off on all inspections and disclosures as a condition of making an offer. All offers must be accompanied by 3% deposit which becomes non-refundable upon acceptance of a given buyer’s offer. Most importantly, the current high bid price is clearly posted for all to see throughout the “auction”.
The advantages are obvious and many including: 1) Buyers don’t need to overpay to buy the home , 2) Sellers get full market price as anybody can outbid anybody else, and 3) Escrows close with near 100% certainty, sharply contrasting with the average 35% fall-out rate in the current system.
Sounds like a win-win to me!
What do you think?
6 Comments:
1-impractical for people to fully inspect prior to offer;too expensive and a hastle for sellers if several people want to inspect.
2-fails to understand buyer;seller psycology.]
3-slightly germanic efficiency has nothing to do with selling.
Ridiculous. Seller clearly has the advantage of getting the buyer to sign off on all inspections and contingincies. The respective agents should be held to a higher standard of honesty and responsibility. And buyers could learn to not buy into the hype. It seems that the escrow cancels may be due to the fact that the agents oversell the need to buy now.
I think the system is lame as well. I find you have to be a schrew and drive the sale yourself. personally I am in sales (not RE) there seems to be alot of bs in RE, sleezy but not smartbs(of course we're dealing with RE agents).
"we have stronmg interest" is BS, DOM BS(no policing ie putting the prop on , off back on. Many other areas of RE suck too, appraisals - complete joke, 99.999% of time no matter how outragous the price always seems to appraise out hmmmmmmm.
Need a loan sure call counrtywide they give you one, how much do you make , ah 200k, perfet you got it.
A lot of these folks should be in jail and I suspect depending on how bad the fall out is from the recent deline in sales I suspect there will be carinage. a lot of RE agents will have time to reinvent themselves and have time to finish their degrees(highschool of course).
sorry for the rant. there's alot of truth to my statements.
opinions?
I think the system is lame as well. I find you have to be a schrew and drive the sale yourself. personally I am in sales (not RE) there seems to be alot of bs in RE, sleezy but not smartbs(of course we're dealing with RE agents).
"we have stronmg interest" is BS, DOM BS(no policing ie putting the prop on , off back on. Many other areas of RE suck too, appraisals - complete joke, 99.999% of time no matter how outragous the price always seems to appraise out hmmmmmmm.
Need a loan sure call counrtywide they give you one, how much do you make , ah 200k, perfet you got it.
A lot of these folks should be in jail and I suspect depending on how bad the fall out is from the recent deline in sales I suspect there will be carinage. a lot of RE agents will have time to reinvent themselves and have time to finish their degrees(highschool of course).
sorry for the rant. there's alot of truth to my statements.
opinions?
The seller should have the house fully inspected prior to sale and provide these reports to all interested parties.
Unfortunately, whenever there is money involved, especially lots of it, one has to be extra careful. That's why it is important to remove as many of the risks to all parties as possible.
Post a Comment
<< Home