Counter Offers : Negotiating your Albuquerque Home
Transcript Snippet: βTego:
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.