Seller Concessions?
Can anyone tell me about seller concessions? It’s been recommended… am pining for a particular house, seller wont budge below a certain #, it needs a ton of work. Other ideas? TIA.
Can anyone tell me about seller concessions? It’s been recommended… am pining for a particular house, seller wont budge below a certain #, it needs a ton of work. Other ideas? TIA.
Dogpatch – that’s pretty impressive. You got the house when you agreed to pay the asking price! Well done.
Jaysus. Are we in lalaland?
Dogpatch and Ringo,
Thanks for the insights into some of the gritty realities of real estate negotiations.
BHO,
You’ve been looking since 2004 and haven’t bought anything? Even with the decline during the past few years you’re going to pay more than if you’d bought something in 2004.
one common tactic is to give them their price, go into contract, then demand a reduction after inspection. if it’s a house, you can always find something. at that point the broker wants it done, and often a seller does too.
I think it’s a little lame, but it’s commonly done.
Sounds like a battle of wills, but I suggest you take comfort in the fact that there will ALWAYS be another house/co-op/condo etc. that comes around. Maybe there isn’t much of interest on the market right now, THAT WILL CHANGE with time. You do not want to overpay in this market, in fact you should underpay if anything.
We just closed on a place after pretty lengthy negotiations. We didn’t ask for seller’s concessions but we did a very detailed and well documented/backed up punch list of fixes that would have to be done for us to close.
We had agreed on a price that was pretty close to the asking (15K below) and had assured the sellers that we had the down payment and financing ready and would also be prepared to walk away (even though we really wanted the building) so I think that helped convince them to take our deal.
To get to the agreement we were helped tremendously by having an architect and inspector give us reports and prices for all the basic health and safety items that needed fixing.
We put them those items into a rider on the contract and, over the course of a few back and forths, ended up having to yield on a few things but basically got promises on the most essential of the fixes. Our lawyer also really was strategic about what things to really insist on and what things to give up so the sellers could feel they were winning something.
The day before we closed we did one final inspection and put together a punch list with the remaining things to be fixed and held back 3K in escrow, which we are just about to release once they fix one more thing.
Hope some of that might be helpful, good luck!
“Either half off or continued declines towards that. Nothing else.”
I know people who were saying the same thing back in 1993… they’re still waiting.
“we’re in a deflationary spiral”
We are not. So it’s clear that you don’t even know what that means.
No Lincoln, it was a general comment about the state of the market, both then and now. Learn not to be an ass.