Well, I read an article this morning about a seller screaming to her listing agent to stop bringing lowball offers - that she is not that desperate, not a short sale.
Is buyer thinking in short sale MODE??? What are your thoughts??This message has been edited. Last edited by: real estate lady,
I think the buyers are seeing so many houses sell for pennies on the dollar that they're getting conditioned to think lots of sellers will accept a low offer, so why not try?
I also think that agent needs to explain to "screamer" that she is obligated to present all offers to her client, whether the agent personally agrees with the terms of the offer or not.
I am sure that most of us that have sold and bought homes before, are aware of the fact that any agent must present all offers to the seller. Having said that, I believe that prior communication with the agent will provide the agent with an idea what the bottom line is for the seller. and simply present the offer as a formality. Yes, I do believe that many buyers believe that everyone that is selling a house is on the verge of foreclosure or in desperate need to sell. That is unfortunate, therefore low ball offers will continue, the only thing that a seller has to do is to simply reject the offer.
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Originally posted by rker321: I am sure that most of us that have sold and bought homes before, are aware of the fact that any agent must present all offers to the seller.
The "screamer" probably didn't fully realize this....hence the screaming.
I think a lot depends on HOW the offer is presented by the agent. Of course some sellers may be screamers, or they refuse to accept the unfortunate reality of the current market, or others may just be venting their frustration on the agent inappropriately.
But for most of the rest, if the agent has explained that s/he must present all offers, then all s/he needs to do is say, "Seller, as you know, I'm obliged by law to present all offers. Here's the one I just received..." I suspect instead what's going on is that the agent is trying to get the seller to negotiate with people who are being really unreasonable and wasting the seller's time. Or the seller may believe s/he's communicated repeatedly to the agent that s/he's not going to consider any starting offer below $X, but the agent is behaving as if s/he hasn't listened. That can be very annoying.
If the offers are market offers, then the agent can probably do himself/herself AND everyone else a favor by sympathetically explaining to the seller that it might be wise to take the house off the market for now.
In the area where I live, the market is relatively good for sellers, so if offers were truly "low ball" rather than just lower than some pie-in-the-sky price (and there are some houses that have "sat" on the market a long time because of this, so I know some sellers like this are out there), they probably get outbid pretty quickly.
We encountered this when we were shopping for our home two years ago. Seller wanted to take our second offer, but seller's spouse got greedy. Negotiations got so nasty that the seller's realtor walked away from the listing. They put it back on the market a few weeks later - at $10,000 LESS than what we offered - and I doubt they sold it for much more than our original offer.
In the meantime, a lovely home in a better neighborhood went on the market. The seller put a very reasonable price on it, we made a reasonable offer, and they were lovely to work with.
