Winning Offers In a Shifting Market

As we mentioned in our April market update, there are parts of our market which are shifting with growing inventory, days on market and larger concessions being made by sellers. These markets are often outside of the highest demand neighborhoods, homes with deferred maintenance & lack of updates or just sellers who may be out of touch with the market.

Unfortunately, all too often buyers work with brokers who are unable or unwilling to take the time make aggressive offers based on the realities of today’s market… or effectively justify their aggressive offers to seller choosing a “toss it out there, and see if it sticks” approach which often only aggravates already frustrated sellers leading to failure.

Using a more proactive & effective approach, this past week we helped an investor negotiate more than 7.5% off a listing which was optimistically priced and not well presented to the market. Prior to our offer, it gathered more than 100 days of marketing time without a price reduction and turned down low offers from 4 prior buyers - some of which were higher than our client’s offer.  The key to our success was clearly documenting market conditions & recent comparable sales to demonstrate our offer fair value for the seller. 

Without our strategic approach, one of two things often happens with aggressive offers…

• Listing Broker Rejection… they do not want to feel like they are fighting against their client, so they simply tell the seller to reject the offer, or make an aggressive counter offer.
  
  
• Sellers Feel Abandoned & Defensive… when listing brokers work to justify the offer, Sellers often feel abandoned by their broker & become defensive especially if they’ve already received pressure to reduce price.

With our approach, not only do the Sellers feel more empowered by keeping their sense of trust in their broker, they also have facts which will help calm their sense of loss when the reality of their value does not match their earlier hopes & expectations.

While our approach to negotiation takes more time and effort, it yields better results for our buyers and should be the standard you and your friends expect from a great Buyer Broker.