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Offer Mania - 5 Ways to Help Your Buyers Win
(Part #1)
With multiple offers the rule rather than the exception in Florida, how do you get your buyer’s offer accepted? Here are
five creative ways Realtors® get the job one.
by Tracey C. Velt
The days when buyers had the upper hand are a dim memory for most Florida sales associates. These days, sellers can count on taking their pick of offers, which makes getting your buyers’ offers accepted harder and makes representing buyers even tougher duty.
“It’s pretty wild right now,” says Denise Rubin, an associate with Coldwell Banker Aventura North in Aventura. “There’s not a lot of inventory, and we’re educating the buyer that the old mentality of getting a steal or a deal [isn’t valid anymore]. In this market, it’s a matter of getting the property,” she says. “When inventory is short, the only thing creative [about your buyer’s offer] is increasing your price,” says Steven David, broker-owner of Florida Professional Real Estate in Fort Lauderdale. That’s reality. “In different times, things may be different,” he adds.
“In Palm Beach, all-cash offers — with no contingencies, a shortened time frame for inspection, a substantial deposit and references [proving] that the buyers have the money — are all very common,” says John Pinson, broker-owner of John D. Pinson Inc. in Palm Beach. “On land [offers], buyers are putting down nonrefundable deposit money,” he says. “The offers are written so that due diligence must be done within two weeks. After that, a second down payment is made on the property,” he says.
No matter how often you tell a buyer that buying a house is a business transaction, the emotional pressure of getting an acceptable home in a seller’s market can be traumatic. So, when a hot property comes on the market and your buyer “needs” the house, how do you ensure your offer will at least get serious consideration? Here’s what Realtors around the state are doing to help their buyers’ offers win homes:
Many times a note in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) will say something like “Due to multiple offers, all offers will be presented to the seller on [a certain date] at 4 p.m.” So Terri Anderson, a sales associate with RE/MAX Metro in Tampa, knows that it’s vital to use a timing strategy when turning an offer over to the listing agent and seller.
“I’ll hold the offer until 3 p.m. that day and submit,” says Anderson. That gives her time to find out what the highest offer is (assuming the seller wants to release that information) and “write my offer for $1,000 over the highest offer, no matter what it is,” she says.
Strategically timing offers can give buyers the advantage of having the highest offer at the last minute. However, it can also backfire if another buyer comes in with an offer 25 percent higher than the asking price and the seller decides to jump on it right away. Good communication with the listing agent is vital to making your buyer’s offer at just the right time — and with just the right terms.
Timing can also come into play concerning inspection periods. “I recently lost a property because the inspection period was for three days,” says Laura Napoleon, an associate with Watson Realty Park Place at Heathrow in Lake Mary. “The other offer was exactly the same, identical price and terms, except it had a one-day inspection period. It’s incredible.”
Meagan Somers, a sales associate with Coldwell Banker in St. Petersburg, works with buyers as a buyer’s agent and uses timing in another way. She jumps on listings only hours old in the MLS. “Last week, I had some buyers in from Manhattan, they signed an exclusive buyer’s agreement and we went to one property that was just hours in the MLS,” says Somers, a five-year veteran who sold $9.5 million last year. “The listing agent was holding an open house the next day. So, I told the buyers to put themselves in the seller’s shoes — what could they do to get an offer accepted immediately so that the listing agent [wouldn’t] move forward with the open house?
“They offered above list price, a 12-day closing, [acceptance of the property] as-is with the right to inspect and cleaned up all the time periods,” she says. The New York buyers got the property thanks to a savvy Somers, who keeps a close eye on new listings in the MLS and helps her buyers make aggressive offers.
Putting down good-faith money is routine, but David and Dorothy Eiglarsh are “experimenting with having our buyer clients make a portion of their good-faith deposit completely nonrefundable regardless of the outcome of the transaction,” says David Eiglarsh. The mother-and-son team with RE/MAX Hometown in Miami Beach finds this approach to be successful. “Should the buyer back out of the transaction because of an appraisal issue, failure to obtain financing, inspection issue, etc., a portion of his [or her] deposit would be forfeited to the seller,” he says.
“In a multiple-offer situation, we need to find every possible way to make our offer more appealing. This is one way to do that,” says David Eiglarsh.
Another tip is to have buyers offer a big down payment. Anderson recently had a buyer who put down $5,000 on a condominium listed at $107,000. “Everyone was blown away, and my buyer was sure to win.”
Continue to Offer Mania Part #2
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