I am not a real estate pro - I have bought and sold homes several times. . .I listed my house a little over a day ago and I'm getting a good deal of action - but one feedback from a showing said the price was too high and they would make an offer only if the listing price was lowered . . . WTF? Are they asking me to counter MYSELF? Isn't the usual protocol to make an offer somewhere below your max comfort level and see how the seller reacts/counter offers? And why would I adjust the price just a little more than a day after listing? Especially with multiple showing requests scheduled. It may be the list is too high, but isn't that what the market is for? Offer and counter offer? I'm obvious not gonna make a change less than two days in, and my agent agrees - but I'm curious if this is a "thing" now. Or not?
'Thank you for your interest. Feel free to make an offer at the price that you believe the property is worth to you.'
Either they make an offer, in which case you get to decide whether to take it or not… or they don’t make an offer, in which case you don’t care in the slightest what they think of the house or your listing price.
I laughed at some of the feedback I got when I last put my rental on the market. Some people with garbage credit gave really stupid feedback. Meanwhile a couple with an 800 credit score offered more than my ask.
Wow, wonder where you are at with that nonsense. We had the same problem but as buyers. Offered 20% over ask in cash and got a "mmmm nah, we were hoping for 50% over" -- never heard anything so daft in my life. They even let my offer just expire without a formal counter. I interpreted it as a large middle finger and moved on. They rotted on the market for an eternal 8 weeks before going into escrow. As seller in your shoes I'd expect an offer or GTFO -- purely because of manners. To dictate your marketing to you is rude AF and that "real estate professional" needs kicked in the bonch. Which is the other reply you might consider.
I'd keep the response simple. Ask them to make their best offer and give them a deadline in which they need to do it by (24 hours should do). If they don't/wont, oh well, you can move on. Last year I made an offer at 100% list price, no inspections, seller choose closing date. The seller responded that they wanted another $30,000, and I had to decide by the end of business. In the end, I gave them the $30,000. They knew I drove 600 miles to look at it, and they knew that they were selling something that was unique and couldn't be easily found. Sucked for me as a buyer. Worked great for me as a seller. Honestly, people get so worked up about the market, but assuming you are selling/buying, it really doesn't matter. You experience both sides.
“At your request I have lowered my asking price from $850,000 to $910,000 Go ahead and make your offer, thank you” (910 is ‘lower’ than 850)
Ignore the showing feedback, some buyers are tire kickers and like to “talk” like they know what’s up with their agent when they probably don’t even own any property. Price your home right, you’ll have several showings everyday and wait at least 7-10 days for offers to pile in then set the buyers loose to fight it out among themselves.
"Thank you for your feedback. It will be given the proper consideration. Should you change your mind, please do not bother to contact me in the future."
I’d fire the idiot realtor that forwarded that piece of feedback to me. Their one job is to sell my house; my realtor should be handling that kind of stupid.
Yeah, I'd think the realtor would filter that crap out unless there were multiple prospects all leaving that same feedback and we needed to reevaluate the market pricing.
A question is whether the person setting the asking price was realistic or not. How many times have we seen people overvaluing something? Of course, there are certainly a lot of people always trying to lowball just to see what would get accepted. When we sold my parent's house, the realtor gave us recommendations along with expected time on market for each price point. We selected the asking price that the realtor said was reasonable and would move quickly. Sure enough, at the showing for realtors, some putz offered 20% below the asking price but in cash. Well, we waited to see what would happen when it actually went of the market... and got the asking price immediately. oh, btw, and I think the realtor is obligated to let the seller know about every offer.
There is a house I am slightly interested in. It is on 5.3 acres which a lot that size is hard to find in that area. The house is smallish 2200 sq ft but has two rather large shops, one 50X60 and one 40X50, both heated and with 240 outlets. The bigger one has a car lift in it. The house was built in 1972 and still has that 70s look inside... Their first asking price was 600K. After a year it has gone to 500K. It is now 6 months since the last price drop and still on the market.
Feedback from showings is garbage. My wife is a realtor, and the feedback is almost always the same. Price too high, Needs updating, things like that. I think showing agents are asked to provide feedback by the software, so this is what they say. Obviously if they were interested, they would make an offer.
My wife sent me a few listings at La Cholla air park just north of Tucson. She has horses and they had facilities listed. No hangar. Plus, and I told her this, 2.2 million is juuuust a bit out of our price range. She sent me this:
The ridiculous way some to look at buying. "Scrape it off, build me a new home to my liking, and maybe I'll buy it". No sophistication. I don;t like that color of wall, so I won't buy. So paint the wall the color you want. They can't seem to see through that. It's a strange market populated with spoiled consumers, thinking they are deserving of gold plated fixtures. The entitled generation. I can't be bothered with painting a wall themselves. The TV programs cater to them and give them unreal expectations. The last few years, the same can be said of the sellers.
Lower the listing price by $1.00 and send back a message "Per your request, we lowered the listing price. Please submit your offer as you promised?"
Hopefully, they're agent (if they had one) put the screws on them for the commission. Most of the contracts here have a clause that the commission is due when the agent finds "a buyer that is ready, willing , and able to purchase the Property upon the terms and conditions mentioned herein..."
When we got a goofy lowball on our house, I suggested the Don Corleone counter offer, by countering it for MORE than what we had it listed for originally.
One of the problems you see during any real estate boom is inexperienced realtors who jumped in to “get rich” and get spoiled by throwing things on the MLS, letting them sell themselves, and collecting a quick commission with little to no effort. It takes a cooling of the market to send these folks back to their normal habitat. I saw this firsthand a number of years ago, before the most recent boom when we were still stuck in a slump. I followed the recommendation of a coworker who had successfully sold with a realtor, failing to note that they had caught the tail end of a good market. These folks were a disaster and I canceled with them after 60 days without a single offer. I found another realtor and accepted an offer for about the same asking price as before within a week. They knew how to market the property and had experience/a network, whereas the others were “list it, it’ll sell itself just like all the others.”
Yup, although hindsight 20/20 I would have gotten my realtor's license about 2 years ago and made a metric ****-ton of cash doing essentially nothing because of how lopsided the market was, lol. Show some houses in the evening or on the weekend, and boom, another few grand in commissions!
Buyers are finicky, I wouldn't listen to it and let it roll off. They likely really liked it but can't afford it so they make stupid comments. Even if you lowered the price the same people would still complain.
This touches on another issue-what I call the “but I want it, so I should have it” mentality…you commonly see this on the home renovation or home search shows. Completely unrealistic expectations given the budget. I saw a meme once mocking these folks, something to the effect of “John and Jane: combined income-60k. Budget-3.2 million”
Our realtor, bless her heart, is nice and we like her… but she’s never seen high interest rates and a buyer’s market. When we bought this place in 2004, it had been on the market for nearly six months. That was not at all unusual. It took us for or five months to sell our old house. She was in high school back then. I got a little testy once or twice when we were buying rental houses because if the listing was more that 12 hours old, there was probably already an offer pending. We stopped looking after a while because houses were selling not only over asking price, but 20-25% or more over what any sane person would ever think they were worth. We’ll step back in when interest rates slow things down some. Like a lot. I have to wonder how long it’s going to be before there’s a bunch of people who financed with an ARM that need to dump their houses… though fixed rates were so ridiculously low for such a long time it’s probably a small number.
[House Hunters episode] HUSBAND: "I sell used 8-track tapes" WIFE: "And I hang potatoes in people's garages" HUSBAND: Our budget is $950K
You seem a bit defensive about a comment made by one prospective buyer. Every showing that doesn’t result in a offer is a rejection. Get over it. There are a lot of shoppers who can’t afford what they desire.
You need a better realtor. The only comment you should hear is the one accompanied by a $5K earnest money check.
Maybe they’re thinking that getting you to lower the asking price to match what they will pay locks them in and you then can’t wait around for better offers.
This^ Plus, the house may be fairly priced but their budget is below said price and they are trying to get a deal.
We sold our house in Chicago last week in less than 48 hours. So, the housing market still seems pretty good for sellers, though definitely not as hot as it was over the previous couple years. 2/3rds of our showings said the price was fair. 25% said it was good. 15% said the price was too high. So, I'm gonna say we priced it pretty well for the market. We are selling a bunch of stuff we don't need (we're moving into a much larger house, but one that we already furnished, so we are getting rid of furniture from the Chicago house) and are pricing the stuff to move. All of our prices are, if anything, too low because we just don't want to deal with the hassle, want the stuff out and the few extra dollars we might be able to squeeze out of the deals aren't worth the stress. So if someone replies to a $100 item offering $80, our counter is $105. And if they persist, I raise it by similar amounts. They usually get the message quickly and move on, because they are bottom feeders. Related: I have been absolutely astounded at the number of people that say they will come by that evening or the next morning or whatever and then no-show. I don't really care all that much. I remote work, so I'm home anyway. But it really, really weird how many people do that. I can't imagine sitting around looking at local ads, calling people, agreeing to a deal and then changing my mind. For me, I would fire my realtor if I found out they were withholding information from me.
Now is an ugly time to be in the housing market, buying or selling. Houses are appraised and financed based on the full weight of comp valuations but purchased based on monthly payments. The comps a home is priced on attracted different buyers than those shopping today. Take for example a $500K house: Some friends of mine bought last summer and purchased with a 2.8% interest rate, at that rate the payment would be $2300 (10% down w/PMI). Today's average rate is 6.9%, the same $500K mortgage would be $3434 per month. So your buyer for a $500K house last summer would have been comparing it to a slightly luxury 3 bedroom apartment in most major cities, today, they are comparing it to a luxury penthouse. Most people who are looking at your house are saying that because they cannot afford your house, and while I understand the reaction to that is to say "that isn't my problem", it is in fact your problem. A year ago, they could afford your house, six months ago they could probably afford your house. Today it costs 75% more per month than it did 9 months ago, and home buyers budget monthly. I don't know where you are located, but if you want to get a good idea of where your house needs to be price wise, you should start by looking at new home sellers and see where they are pricing houses and decide if you want to undercut them, because if you don't you should plan on owning your house another 5 years. In Las Vegas, new home builders are discounting houses by $100K on $700K homes. I have seen some that were being discounted by nearly 20% from where the were priced 6 months ago. Example: $158K price cut https://www.realtor.com/realestatea...-Landings-Ave_Las-Vegas_NV_89166_M95915-99294 or $143K price cut https://www.realtor.com/realestatea...lver-Comet-Ct_Las-Vegas_NV_89178_M97980-58000 Is your market as overvalued as Las Vegas? I don't know, but historically Las Vegas is the canary in the coal mine. We are seeing data from other cities follow Las Vegas' trajectory (Austin, TX wasn't far behind and Atlanta seems to be a few months delayed). I know its annoying to be told that your stuff is worth less than you think it is, but there is a real possibility that your house is priced based on the market 3 months ago, overpriced for the market yesterday and will not be worth as much as it was yesterday for the next 5 years. One last note: after the last 2 years the "usual protocol" is broken. Home buyers are very hesitant to make aggressive offers below asking price even if that is the only way they are interested, and real estate agents are not incentivized to press them too. In fact, I was speaking to a real estate agent the other day who has never had an offer under asking price accepted (she admitted she had only written offers under twice in her 4 years as a buyers agent), and she told me if I was looking to "low ball" buyers I would not be able to find someone to work with me (I am ok with that, I would rather not buy than overpay), but this was one of the leading agents in her brokerage the last 2 years.
