Jane was a joy to work with
"Jane was a joy to work with"
Jane was a joy to work with, and I would recommend her to anyone who is looking to sell/buy a home! We had an offer on our home the first day it was on the market, and it sold without a hitch. As this was the first home we have sold, we had lots of questions, and she was very knowledgeable and made the process easy for us. She helped us out in countless ways – even to the very end. You will be in good hands with Jane!
08/18/2022 – marcus sitterly
Sold a Townhouse home in 2022 in Albuquerque, NM.
Counter Offers : Negotiating your Albuquerque Home
Counter Offers : Negotiating your Albuquerque Home
Transcript Snippet: “Tego:
All right, Tracy
Tracy:
Counter offer
Tego:
Counter offers. So let’s see, how are we doing on time here? We’re doing good. We’re doing good. So we’re gonna talk about counter offers because if you ever purchase a home or sell a home really good chance, you’re gonna be in a situation where you’re doing counter
Tracy:
Offers. You’re doing some sort of negotiation on the price, the terms, the closing date, the what what’s included in the property, different things.
Tego:
So, so just walk, walk people through the whole process of, of if you’re a buyer and how does that work? You, you write an offer, right? Yeah. What does that mean?
Tracy:
Yeah. The buyer just picks out what they wanna offer on somebody’s property, the terms, conditions, price, what would be included? The washer, dryer, fridge, sometimes personal property. You know, sometimes it’s something that isn’t bolted down, but they make their offer. It gets presented to the seller by the seller’s realtor.
Tego:
And, and part of, part of the offer is gonna detail who pays for what? Right. In, in the deal, right? Yeah. You’re gonna have, you’re gonna have closing costs, whatever it is, you know,
Tracy:
Inspections. Yeah. Closing costs, title work, and who pays for what? And so sometimes the seller can sign that offer as written, right? Yeah. Our goal as buyer agents or buyer brokers is to write an offer. A seller can sign and not have to counter, but we don’t always know, you know, the realtors usually connect, say what’s important to your seller. And if the buyer can, can do what’s important to the seller, then we try to write that offer. But oftentimes the seller and the seller’s agent need to write a counter. Right. And so what happens when you write a counter offer is the original offer is off the table. Yep. Right? Yep. And they counter and say, we will accept X, Y, and Z, but we wanna change a, B and C.
Tego:
So give an example of some, some of the things that the common things we see in a counter offer tracing.
Tracy:
Well, common obviously number one is price. Yeah. These days, most offers come in at full price or above full price. But sometimes, you know, there’s, there’s escalation clauses and different reasons why we might need to clarify what price the seller is willing to take. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and then closing date, sometimes sellers need a different closing date because maybe they’re buying a different property and they want it to coincide. Hopefully as buyers agents, we would’ve asked that question ahead of time. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> sometimes, you know, the buyer might say, I really want the washer dryer, fridge. It might be a, a condo that you have to take an elevator to get to and getting a washer and dryer and fridge in can be hard to do and they wanna leave it. And maybe that the seller wants to counter and say, no, I can’t leave that. Or, or maybe, you know, it’s, it’s a chandelier that the seller wanted to keep, but they forgot to say no. And so they need to counter and say, we’re gonna replace that one with something different. Or mm-hmm <affirmative> a lot of times it’s the terms it’s who pays for what, it’s the price, it’s timing, those types of things that are countered.
Tego:
Yeah. And, and I think, I think one of the things we, we say a lot in this world is, you know, everything’s negotiable. Well, not necessarily because certain things like the fee that title companies charge that’s set, right. The state
Tracy:
Set by the state
Tego:
State regulates, what, what title charge, what title
Tracy:
Insurance, the title, insurance
Tego:
Fee, the actual insurance policy is. Right. You know, home inspector fees. I mean, those, those are set. Right. But there’s, you know, there’s different home inspectors that have different, different pricing schedules. Right. but who pays for it generally can be negotiated.
Tracy:
Yep. So, so my advice when we have to counter something is to counter the big, big rocks. You know, sometimes there’s things that when you get an offer that you can let go, you can say, you know, really wanted to keep my fridge, but the offers clean, otherwise the dates work, the price is right. I’m I’m not gonna counter it. But
Tego:
So it’s usually price and dates. That’s generally the
Tracy:
Price dates and who pays. Yeah.
Tego:
Yeah, yeah. That’s it. Yeah.
Tracy:
And you know, a lot of times Tigo encountering people think that they offer to buy the house and sell the house is the negotiation. Yeah. There are several other negotiations that come up. Right. So we do inspections and a lot of times the buyer has the opportunity to request repairs. That’s the next negotiation. Right. Right. Sometimes at the end we get an appraisal that may or may not support value, and we might need to renegotiate the sales price. We may need to renegot renegotiate some repairs because we agreed to do something, but we can’t find the part or something. Right. Right. And sometimes when we’re negotiating and we are doing counter offers a buyer or seller will say, I am firm. I am not, I’m gonna walk away if this isn’t the case, this is not gonna work for me if they don’t come to my price or whatever. But what we typically see is people agree. Right. We get things to come together. There’s not a lot of drawing a line in this.
Tego:
You know, the, the goal always is, is a win-win deal. Right. The goal is that, that both parties feel like they won. Right. Right. To a certain extent. And I mean, know, that’s not always possible, but of course
Tracy:
It’s not really winning, but that they got is the goal, what works for them. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And oftentimes people say I’ve drawn a line in the sand and I won’t go above this, or I won’t go below that. But when you get that in writing, sometimes you go, okay, the rest of it works for me. I’m gonna erase that line in the sand and make it work.
Tego:
Yeah. I know in, in this business verbal offers is, is not a good deal and verbal counter offers, not a good deal. Everything in writing first off, a verbal, anything, anything in, in nego contract negotiations means nothing.
Tracy:
It’s not enforceable,
Tego:
It’s not enforceable. And I know, you know, people say, well, you know, Hey, my handshake is good and all that, I get that, that’s fine. It’s just that, you know, if it’s not in writing, it’s not real. And in our business, it has to be in writing before it’s real. Right.
Tracy:
The real estate commission says we should do everything in writing. Correct. Anyway, but correct. Of course, contract law would also sell us the same thing.
Albuquerque Home Prices, Supply and Sales Stats
Albuquerque Home Prices, Supply and Sales Stats
Transcript Snippet: “Tego:
We go, okay. Home prices and supply and sales. So home sales, Tracy, you know, they’ve been down in the last few, let’s just say few months, if we compare, you know, 20, 21 to 2022, and we start comparing the two years, the number of home selling are, are down there. There’s no doubt about it. Just to give you an idea from, let’s see, let me pull up the number here from.do, keep thinking here. Okay. There we go down 15% from June of 2021 to June of 2022, the number of homes selling. So that’s that’s substantial, but there were still 1200, almost 1,250 homes sold in the Albuquerque area. Just, just last month.
Tracy:
That’s a big number, but let’s talk about some of the reasons, you know, I’m, you’re the stat guy and I’m the, what I think the market’s really doing.
Tego:
Yeah. And let me give you the context there. So home sales down 15% compared to price per square foot, I’m gonna do price per square foot. As a, as a comparison are up 17% June this year versus June of last
Tracy:
Year. Interesting. So the two price
Tego:
Sales are down 15% prices are up. Let’s just ballpark 15, 17%.
Tracy:
So when, when I was gonna say I’m the, the feet on the street and what do I think versus what the stats says? So why are we down? Right. So think about the last
Tego:
Sales. You mean sales
Tracy:
Stats. Why, why are sales down? Yeah, not prices. Think about the last few months Tigo and all the news about the interest rates going up and all the doom and gloom noise out there about homes and interest rates. So people, I mean, the cost of buying a home in our market now is up considerably over the last couple of years. So we have priced out certain people from the market and the home prices are up across the board. So we, with higher interest rates, it’s, it’s tough. But in addition, home B home builders are having a hard time closing on those homes. They’ve been building for the last year as a, a side note to that. Well, what, just,
Tego:
Just explain that. What do you mean they’re having time hard time closing on those homes they’ve
Tracy:
Been building. Exactly. So I have a client that mm-hmm, <affirmative> put a house to be built under contract last September. So we’re, you know, 10 months or so in. And that house isn’t done yet as a new construction soon, soon, but you know, it’s almost a year really of getting that lot ready, getting the permits, ready, picking the floor plan and then getting it built. But the builders are having a hard time, you know, it’s taking 10 to 14 months for them to build a house. Some, some of ’em longer mm-hmm <affirmative> and supplies. They, they, you know, they can’t put all that money out front generally to build a house. They usually do that just in time thing where sure. We’re not gonna order the door package till we’re almost to frame or we’re at frame or we’ve got the Sheetrock up or, you know, the window package. We’re not gonna order windows until we have a foundation forward.
Tego:
They’re they’re not doing that
Tracy:
Though, but, but we’re seeing some of it where they’re trying to, you know, be careful about ordering too soon and having the expense out, but not too late that it’s outta stock and they can’t get it. Right. So, so it’s just taking builders. It’s it’s seems it’s lot of procedure.
Tego:
Yeah. But it seems like they would’ve adjusted for that. I mean, this has been going on for two years, over
Tracy:
Two years. Some of them really have adjusted for it. Yeah. And some of ’em once you put a house under contract to be built, not one, that’s what we call a spec home. That’s already under construction. Sure. some of the builders are ordering everything up front and then they’re carrying it and they have to store it and have it ready to be able to build with, which is, you know, expensive for a builder. Well,
Tego:
Absolutely. And the other thing is lumber now has come down. Lumber is still higher than it was in 2019, but, but it’s come down from the, the peaks that we saw in mid pandemic for,
Tracy:
For lumber. It has, but other things have gone up. Exactly. Right. So lumber prices have come down, but it’s kind of the, what’s this week’s building product that’s gone up.
Tego:
And what I’ve been saying to people is, you know, if you’re waiting for home prices for new construction to come down I wouldn’t hold your breath. It, it just doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen. What’s gonna happen is home builders. And we talked about this last week, Tracy is home. Builders are just gonna start let’s say value engineering, their homes, making ’em smaller, you know, cutting, cutting stuff here and there to keep the prices within a, a median range to keep ’em affordable for people that they wanna buy. Right. Okay. Back to the original topic or we’re still on the same topic topic sort of, we kind of sidetracked a little bit,
Tracy:
Like I said, sidebar,
Tego:
A little sidebar. So we were saying, okay, sales are down.
Tracy:
Prices are not,
Tego:
Prices are not. And why, why are prices not if home sales are down, how come prices are not well, it’s, it’s really simple. It’s still all about supply and demand. It always is always will be, you know, the, the, yes, demand has come down in the last, let’s say three months with, with the interest rates, it’s definitely pushed some people out of the market. The, the, the affordability has taken a hit, no doubt about it because of interest rates and just the, the, the big appreciation we’ve had in a couple years. So, so yes, demand is still has pulled back. Some supply has started to increase ever so slightly. In fact, I just did an analysis in what I found is that I went back to 2007. So in 2007, we saw year over year increase in inventory about 400%. Wow. and then starting somewhere in about 20 2009 we saw overall a decrease in the number of homes coming on, or number of homes available in Albuquerque year over year for, for the longest time.
Tego:
So we’ve been on this decline in the number of homes on the market. So Tracy, I’m looking at the chart here, you know, you can see it, but we’ve, we’ve had a decrease in a number of homes on the market in Albuquerque, starting in about 2012. And it’s continued to decline all the way up until may of 2022. So in the last two months, we’ve started to have annual increases in the number of homes on the market first time in the longest time, but we’re still ridiculously, you know, low compared to what would be considered a normal market.
Tracy:
And if you’re listening and you’d like to see the chart that we’re looking at, yeah. Just email call. We can send it to you. We’d be happy to,
Tego:
Or just call me. You wanna talk market. If you, if the media call me, if you wanna talk about real estate, I love doing that stuff.
“Very professional and a great experience for a first-time homebuyer.”
“Very professional and a great experience for a first-time homebuyer.”
Very professional and a great experience for a first-time homebuyer. Absolutely amazing buying experience would recommend her very highly to buy a home from her and her amazing team of professionals.