Offer to Buy

I recently read an online real estate item on the latimes.com website discussing purchase offers. Diane Hymer said “Some real estate agents think that a home buyer should make an offer on any property they like, no matter what the odds are that their offer will be accepted”.

Its important for buyers to know that this is absolutely not true. I tell my buying clients that they should make offers on homes they would like to own. Furthermore, that offer should be a strong offer, meaning that it should be a fair offer and at the very least, a reasonable starting point for negotiations.

“I want this house and I’ll pay, xxx,xxx” simply isn’t enough. The terms of “standard” real estate contracts are almost never that simple. In fact, most contracts (my guess is 99.9999995% of them) are at least 10 pages or more with numerous addendums. Your agent should fully explain the offer process and discuss with you, the terms of the agreement. If you don’t understand every single term, or disagree – That contract needs to be re-written or better explained to you.

For more information on making offers, send an e-mail to teamresults@century21.com and request, “I want it, now what?” in PDF format.