Are you a buyer searching for a home in this highly competitive seller’s market? In this video, I’m going to give you some tips to make sure your offer gets accepted. I’ll share some key strategies to get you the home you want even if you’re competing against multiple buyers.
Be The First To Offer
When buying a house in a hot market, everybody worries about offering more money. While this is one way to get your offer accepted, there are other strategies you can employ to be successful. One of the first things you’ll want to do is make sure you’re the first to offer.
Offering first is important, as sometimes sellers will use that as a tiebreaker. If you can get to the home early and be the first offer, I always suggest doing so. When you know the house is for you have that gut feeling, don’t take the night to sleep on it. Don’t take the time to think about it. Just make the offer.
Even if you know the seller is going to be waiting a few days to listen to offers, I still want your offer to be first. I always suggest coming in with your highest and best offer right away. While some buyers want to wait to negotiate, you don’t always have that ability. Sometimes a seller just accepts another offer, never giving you the chance to come back and increase yours. Let’s not let that happen.
Bolster Confidence In The Seller
In addition to your highest offer amount, you want to do things that will make your offer appear strong and confident. Think about a deposit amount; the higher the deposit you leave on the house, the stronger your offer appears. The same would be true if you’re getting a mortgage. The more cash you’re putting down, the stronger the offer appears.
Aside from the money, make sure you’re working with a really strong buyer’s agent who’s going to build a connection with the listing agent. The listing agent needs to convey confidence to their seller, reassuring them that you’re actually going to show up the day of closing. As a buyer, don’t allow your agent to put you in a position where they’re not going to convey that confidence.
Presenting your offer as lacking confidence can happen in many ways. One example is the contract that they’re delivering. You wouldn’t believe how many times I see a contract with items missing, typos, and errors all over the place. It’s a great way for a listing agent to lose confidence in a buyer. In turn, they will convey that to the seller.
Guarantee Your Deposit And Waive Inspections
In addition to these tips, I have some high-risk, advanced strategies you can try. Not everybody is going to be comfortable with these—and I wouldn’t recommend them to everybody. If you want to be a little bit more aggressive, these are for you.
The first thing you can do is guarantee your deposit. This means that if you don’t end up buying the house, you guarantee your deposit and turn it over to the seller—even if you walk away. Another option is to shorten or even waive your inspections. While I don’t necessarily suggest this, there are buyers out there who are completely waiving their home inspection period.
It might make sense to either shorten that inspection time or put a repair cap in the contract. By doing so, you’ll still buy the house as long as there aren’t any significant defects above a certain dollar amount. Again, I would never unnecessarily suggest that you waive your home inspection. However, it’s realistic to realize that chances are another buyer you might be competing with may be doing just that.
Contingencies, Flexibility, And Escalation Clauses
If you have the ability, you may also want to waive as many contingencies as possible. For example, if you have a home sale contingency or another home you have to sell, you’re probably competing against another buyer who doesn’t have that home to sell. If you can waive that contingency, I would suggest doing so.
Another tip is to make sure you are being flexible. Ask the seller what they want. How much time do they want to close? What’s important to the seller? A good buyer’s agent is going to find that out from the listing agent.
Our last advanced strategy is to use an escalation clause. Make sure you know what you’re doing before using this and make sure your buyer’s agent feels that it’s going to be a worthwhile strategy. Sometimes escalation clauses can backfire. If your agent thinks that the seller is going to be receptive to it, however, an escalation clause can be a great strategy.
Getting Your Offer Accepted
I hope this video showed you some strategies on how to get your offer accepted. If you’re struggling to get offers accepted, please feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to help. We can employ the right strategy specific to your situation.
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