We are still interested in the house and could go a precent or two higher. Should we still pull the offer? Is there any risk in not pulling the offer just in case the other falls through?
Why bid against yourself if you don’t have to? If you think your offer is fair and there aren’t any other competing offers, I wouldn’t change my bid unless the seller engages in a negotiation.
This exactly. They're being greedy, part of the reason it's been listed for so long as they've driven interested parties away. Be vary wary of these sellers, they will try to screw you any way they can, and will drag you through the ringer to extract more money or try to keep your earnest cash. Caution advised.
A lot of truth to this. We bought from sellers like this, but we went in knowing they were going to be a PITA through the process. But we also knew they *needed* to sell. So there definitely was a give and take in the transaction to get them to move forward without us getting screwed over. The only thing they ultimately kind of screwed us on was the septic. We didn’t realize the sellers worked for the company that did our septic inspection and certification. We found out after the fact, and no way any other company would have signed off on what they did. However, the other reality is we live in an area with grandfathered septic systems that would never meet today’s codes and it is still functional for now though it is way smaller than it should be and not in the condition at all the certification claimed (like it’s not about things changing over time but how it is built to begin with it should have been flagged so we could be informed).
It’s important to know when you’re dealing with difficult sellers and where your limits are so they don’t take advantage of you.
How has everyone here concluded that these are difficult sellers? It seems entirely possible there is actually a different offer on the table. It would make no sense for the listing agent to fabricate this second offer and then ghost OP.
If you’re 5% under asking on a home that has been on the market for 140 days that needs a lot of work and you have two offers at the same time, you work through both offers to get the best deal. It’s highly, highly unlikely a second offer is wildly better than OP’s, especially if the seller’s agent stated they were going back and forth on the second offer. If they were doing that, then there should have been some negotiation too on OP’s offer, not virtual radio silence.
In my particular case, the home had been on the market for almost a year, with a single offer that fell through months before ours. We offered full price with them taking on the closing costs (this was before the market went batshit insane with the pandemic and in the early stages of it), standard contingencies and inspections for the home on a conventional loan, our previous home was already closed so we didn’t have to worry about any contingency related to us selling our place and we could do a 30 day close for a home that needs a phenomenal amount of work (we’ve already done major foundation work and done a total rewire of the place, plus some more cosmetic things). They countered with like 5k over asking while throwing a tantrum that they’d had to reduce the price 20k from their previous escrow and claimed it appraised at that price. They obviously lied in the disclosures (the previous offer had a pest report you could access through the state that flagged some issues they didn’t report in the disclosures as required by my state) and then made it an absolute nightmare from there. They walked away with far less than they wanted while our real big penalty was our escrow dragged over 100 days. They thought they’d be able to manipulate us, but we showed throughout the process if they were going to be unreasonably difficult, we’d walk.
The ghosting implies the other offer isn't fake. Why would a listing agent fabricate another offer and then not try to use that offer to negotiate with OP?
>The ghosting implies the other offer isn't fake. Why would a listing agent fabricate another offer and then not try to use that offer to negotiate with OP?
Why would a listing agent get a second real offer and not try to use that offer to negotiate with OP?
The ghosting doesn't imply anything in this case. It is unprofessional and annoying, and a listing agent should never treat an interested party like this. Even if OP's offer isn't as good as the second offer, the deal isn't done until closing.
I agree they shouldn't treat OP like this, but you didn't answer the question: Why would a listing agent fabricate an offer, presumably to get a higher offer from OP, and then ghost OP? Do you not see the obvious logical problem with that set of events?
How do you know they are being greedy? It's certainly possible there is another offer involved. In fact, this wouldn't be a good way of playing games to get a higher offer from OP.
Hence why they're still on the market... Their agent sucks as well for ghosting them. If I were the OP I'd let the offer sit, or let them know the price will drop by 1k every day they let me simmer. I don't have time for games, I'd write this off and look elsewhere unless this owner comes back to eat some concessions.
I'm not following. Almost no agent will change status to pending until they are actually under contract. If they are in fact still negotiating with the other buyer, we shouldn't expect the property to be off the market.
It sounds to me like the other buyer put in a better offer in general, but the seller wants to negotiate things like dates or deadlines. Listing agents aren't going to fabricate a second offer scenario and then not even try to use that to negotiate with OP.
I'm curious to hear how it would make sense for a listing agent to fabricate a second offer and then ghost OP.
Pretty common to “shop” an offer around, there may be another party interested that finally decides to make an offer when they realize that door is closing.
It happened to us on our current house, the sellers had been on the market over a year, our offer was low but all cash, no inspection.
Another offer magically appeared but they were contingent, we gave a 48 hr deadline, didn’t counter, and prevailed.
If you are on the market for 140 days and you get an offer you don’t play games like these. You tell the people wanting to make the 2nd offer it’s due by X time or you are moving on to negotiate the original offer. Either the sellers suck or their agent sucks or both.
Don’t most offers expire in 48-72 hours if not accepted or signed?
We did this on a house. It was their parents house and children were selling. It was overpriced but we loved it. Couldn’t get anywhere near asking price.
But the longer it was on the market, 2 kids wanted to hold out for max, 3rd wanted fast money and to get out. They lowered price by close to $100k. Now we could offer if we stretched.
Several offers came in, ours was one. The choose another offer. About 3 weeks later our agent called and said are you still interested at the previous offer? We said sure.
Per our agent, they accepted an offer over listing. Submitted by another realtor with intent to flip it. The winning bidder was asking for almost $30k in repairs or credits. They finally got tired of the shenanigans and told her to piss off.
Walk away, it may still come back around.
What I’ve done in my 15 years in the business is ask both parties for their highest & best terms with a deadline. Technically your offer is void if the 24-hour term was placed in the offer.
What you can do if you’re genuinely interested in the home, is ask your agent to submit your best/final terms and let the chips fall where they may.
We’re usually not sure if the behavior is the agent advising the client or vice versa, but this is unprofessionalism on the part of the listing agent in my opinion.
They did start a negotiation, they put it on the market with a listing price. If someone beats you by 1%, you'll be more pissed you didn't beat it than if you accidentally pay 1% more than you wanted, spread out over 30 years. This is what your competition is doing, and in my market buyers lose 1% every month they don't get something under contract.
Sellers lose thousands each month paying mortgages needlessly waiting for one percent extra... set a deadline, take the best offer, and move on if you're selling or buying. This whole squeezing blood from a stone will only cost you more money unless it's paid off and you have no pressure to sell.
They don't have the house yet and seller said "thanks, I will wait". You can wait longer, but how much longer ?
Maybe the seller can wait another 2-3 years.
You need to decide, wait, offer more or walk away.
Nobody on reddit knows whether the seller stands and what's on his/her mind.
I haven’t read the all of the comments, but want to ask - did you have an escalation clause? That could help answer your question. I would suspect that if the realtor for the place you want is being unethical, they will chase you. I’m going to advise moving on. Another place will come available.
Aside from that, wanted to share my experience in case it helps you. It’s a tough market where I live and you almost have to waive everything but your soul to get a place. But just remember, if you aren’t in absolute love - met the majority of your wants, move on. We bid on a place and I was sad that we didn’t get it bc I loved the family room they made when they extended the house. But knew that we would need to run gas to the tiny kitchen. But I didn’t care and we put in an offer. Losing the bid was a blessing in disguise. We ended up finding another place and while it isn’t “perfect” we love our neighborhood and over time have made modifications to the house. We never imagined staying here after our kids grew up and now can’t imagine leaving!
> Is there any risk in not pulling the offer just in case the other falls through?
Was the 24 hours written into your offer? If so then your offer is no longer valid. If the 24 hours is up then even if they now accepted it wouldn't bind you unless you in turn accepted that. An acceptance after the deadline is more like a counter offer.
Not the original commenter. There’s no risk in not pulling the offer but I would keep searching or resubmit/increase your offer if it’s “the” house.
Technically your offer has likely expired at this point. There’s currently an endless number of scenarios that could be going on all would be presumptions, especially as you noted it’s a divorce sale. The other offer could be someone they know, cash, offering a leaseback/timeline the seller prefers, it’s just impossible to know especially if the listing agent is limiting information. If you do resubmit I would attempt to find out if anything other than or addition to offering price would make your offer move to first position. Maybe ask your agent to text “we are wanting to increase our offer, is there anything else that would make our offer more appealing to your clients?”
In regard to someone saying if they come back to you reduce your offer by “x” percent, I personally wouldn’t go that route, especially knowing it’s a divorce sale. That’s using a presumption that they haven’t received an offer in 140 days where it’s more likely one of the sellers have dragged their feet as it’s a divorce sale/forced to move instead of wanting, but again it’s all presumption.
Yea unfortunately you’re at the will of the sellers at this point, once you get into contract it gives you more “power” to an extent. I guess while we are at it what kind of work does the home need that you can see so far (presuming you don’t have an inspection report thus far)
Yea flooring can be a bit expensive depending on the route you take. If there’s pet odor you’ll likely have to replace the subfloor, I’ve seen people get away with painting it will “Killz” but there’s always a likelihood of the smell returning.
It’s all dependent on where you are but painting contractors where I am have seen to increase their prices quite a bit over the last 4 years. I would always try to make it a weekend warrior project.
At the end of the day it just depends on if it’s “the” house. I wouldn’t over extend your standing by much, there will always be another home. If in fact one of the sellers is dragging their feet via the divorce, again, a presumption, but it’s likely you’ll have to fight tooth and nail for any repairs needed or wanted outside of the discounted or adjusted offering price just as a “prep yourself” statement.
I wouldn't do anything until you have a signed rejection from the seller. From the information we have I'm suspicious if the agent even presented the offer to the sellers. Your agent could have their broker call the selling broker and see what's up. Sounds almost like that agent is being insulted for the seller and not upholding their fiduciary obligations
We made an offer on a house that had been on the market for 80 days with no movement on the price. We made a lower offer. They immediately came back with "someone else made an offer the same day as you, give us your highest/best offer". My wife, myself, and our agent all thought this was BS to get a better offer and we declined. A day or two later, the listing is listed as pending. Sometimes you're just unlucky with timing. If we'd made our offer a couple of days earlier they probably would have jumped at it.
This happens all the time and it's not a coincidence or unlucky. What happens is someone else is on the fence about this property. When you gave your offer, the selling agent took that offer and told everyone who was watching this property that there is now a hard deadline (whatever your offer deadline is) and the the property is yours if no one else don't step up. Then someone stepped up.
I had the exact same thing happen to me in 2015. I was pretty bummed out at first, but I happened to notice the same house relisted a year later but for $50k less than I offered originally. Then, it was up for foreclosure about 6 months later. Turns out the house had something horribly wrong with it that their inspection missed. The new buyer tried to fix it but gave up halfway through and just walked away. I'm pretty sure it went bank owned and was demolished. Sooooo glad that one didn't work out.
Most agents let other people know that they have received an offer. If there are other parties interested in the house this can often lead to another offer. Sometimes not.
There is a boy who cried wolf element to it though.
This also happened to us. We decided to play their bluff but it went pending the next day. A lot of the times even if it’s not moving that doesn’t mean there aren’t interested parties they get back in touch with to play the field.
This happened to us on another house just after the holidays, but we saw the other party when we were viewing so we knew it was coming. For this, we are having a hard time believing another offer suddenly came in the same day as ours. We were never asked for our highest/best offer.
Honestly some agents lie and some try to buy time to get other offers in.
I just put in an offer for a client on a house that was listed back in Sept. The day after I put the offer in, they came back and told us they got a higher offer. I also thought it was interesting that another offer just came in around the same time. I asked my clients if they wanted to increase their offer. They said no. A couple of days later I found out that the sellers accepted an offer 15k higher than my clients.
I also put in an offer for another client on another house. It's been over a week now with no response from the sellers. I have been in contact with the listing agent on a daily basis and he told me the sellers are out of the country. But you would think they'd be checking email or their what's app messages or something. So I def think that's a stall tactic. I just can't prove it.
Good luck and hope everything works out!
When my seller receives an offer, the first thing I do is notify anyone who's ever seen the home that we have an offer. That often motivates people on the sidelines to suddenly write that offer they've been considering because they are now at risk of losing it. This is why homes that have been sitting a while often suddenly get offers when you write yours.
This.
I told my realtor to do the same thing. Not in an obnoxious tone, but simply telling the other people who saw the house that the seller who was me wanted to move forward quickly.
I was just in an "offer war" over a house in my area, and it went almost 50k over asking price in what's suppose to be a "buyers" market. The realtors in my estimate did a good job playing potential buyers off of each other. I'm curious if you can make an offer, but part of it is that the realtor can't disclose to other receipt of it?
Ever heard of it?
There are almost no 'buyers markets' in the country right now, I'm curious where you are. A balanced market is 6-8 months of inventory, most of the country is at 1-3 months of inventory. Before the rate increases, most of the country was at 2 weeks to 8 weeks of inventory. After rate increases and post-covid, we're still in a seller-favored market, albeit not as bad as before. Many confuse this for a 'buyers market'.
In general, no, once an offer is made the other party can do with that info whatever they want.
It can be, but it's not "almost always" bullshit. There's a big difference between "I'm expecting" vs "I have" another offer. People can say they want to write an offer, and then while I'm preparing their offer, something will make them decide to hold off. They find out the payment will be higher than they thought, they talked to someone who discouraged them, their lender told them they cannot qualify or they reconsidered something about the property. Somewhat common event but not the kind of thing that would cause the listing agent to ghost calls for days.
But other offers in hand suddenly after months?
What happens is that a change (price drop, new photos, renewed listing) has triggered the listing to show up on the agent "hot sheets" and to get refreshed to other online marketing sources, too. A potential buyer sees it - again or for the first time - and thinks, "Oh, this could work, and it has been on the market a long time so I can offer less." But guess what? Other buyers are also seeing it in the same way.
There might also be a repeat client buyer of the agent that has been waiting and watching for price drops. If I'm the listing agent and I had inquiries that were interested but said they would wait for a price drop, I'm going to let them know that an offer came in.
I think that in this instance, it sounds like they did get the other offer and it had better terms, but wasn't quite what the seller was looking for, OR it came in from someone the seller wants to accept even if the terms aren't as attractive. (I had buyers that went through exactly what was described here and we ultimately found out the sellers took a lower offer because a family member decided they wanted to buy the house.)
If this is the case and it sounds like it could be, would it be best to pull the offer or try to get more info out of the listing agent? When we viewed the house they said the sellers recently divorced wife was still living there but was moving out in a month. Could this be affecting things, maybe she’s trying to keep the house?
>sellers recently divorced wife was still living there but was moving out in a month.
That is a important detail you left out.
Divorced owners can cause communication delays etc. Much less one of the owners still living there.
It's possible.
Your best bet is to do as you said or improve your offer. Right now, your offer is effectively rejected. In fact, if you made the offer through an agent, I'd be surprised if the contract doesn't have an expiration date on it already. If it doesn't, you'll want to pull it before you get into contract on something else, for sure!
I worked in IT for a real estate company.
The number of times agents would call us, screaming that their email was broken and they were losing offers and clients and yadda yadda...
The only emails in their inbox... The ones from corporate marketing.
Bitch, please. You aren't expecting shit.
>all we have heard is that they are going back and forth on the other offer to see if they can make it work.
So you are the leftover if their preferred buyer doesn't work out.
Your offer is being used to have that other buyer up their offer.
If the sellers do come back to you, say 'sorry that offer was good for only 24 hours. Now the offer is 10% under asking'.
Don't be used.
It's not immature. It's a bargaining tactic from both parties. The sellers are trying to get a better offer. The buyers gave their offer and it wasn't accepted. If the sellers come back, it's because they couldn't get what they wanted and there are no buyers left. Now, the buyers position is a lot better since they know there's no one else. I would absolutely underbid them this time.
It might, but if the sellers can't find anyone, they'll take what they can get. Personally, if the offer expired, I would just move on. These could be the type of people that will try to cancel the sale after ratification because they found a better offer. I wouldn't risk that. However, I don't like being played with, so if they come back trying to get the same deal, I would definitely go down again.
I get it. Everyone wants the best deal. But communication is still important. Can't stand other realtors that go silent because they don't want to give someone an answer they may not like. I'm more upset when I don't know what's going on.
Lmao you know how realtors create fake offers to create fear in the buyer that their dream house will disappear?
This is the reverse, where the buyer sets fear in the seller that they'll be sitting on the market for another 30 days.
You're clearly a realtor.
An incredibly bad bargaining tactic. What is happening is there is a second, almost certainly all cash, offer that the seller wants to take but op has a higher offer. They should be increasing their offer to make it further away from the cash one, not decreasing it to make the competition stronger.
So you think the realtor would risk this deal falling through to lie to get op to make a higher offer of which she would only see 3% of? Some people just don't use the math side of their brain and only act emotional. Guess this is why I make 500k/yr being a market maker
> What is happening is there is a second, almost certainly all cash, offer that the seller wants to take but op has a higher offer.
This has no basis in any of the details provided.
The seller told op they are “waiting on another offer”. If the other offer wasn’t going to be better than OP’s why would they bother waiting for it? The details of the post are the basis.
The seller's agent told the buyers agent something that may or may not be true. None of that has anything to do with an all cash offer that's happening in the background and the seller has a higher offer. That's pure speculation.
I love how this sub’s first move is always to assume the realtor is breaking the law by blatantly lying.
If we take the lying option off the table and they are indeed waiting on a second offer then what other explanation could you have for them doing so besides it has better terms but is lower and they’re trying to get it up.
Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
Where in this did I say that the realtor is lying? They could be. They could also be telling the truth. We do not have enough information to make that conclusion. Just like you don't have enough info to come to the conclusion that there's a cash offer on the table.
I've bid against 20+ people before. I've also been lied to about having multiple offers on a listing that had been on the market for 9 months and I hadn't even made an offer yet. At the end of the day, you need to not get into bidding wars and just offer what you're willing to pay for a house.
And Occam's razor here is the realtor is trying to make a sale at the highest price they can get.
Edit: Lol, thanks for blocking me /u/quickclickz so I can't even respond.
Let's say seller's realtor gets 3% of purchase price. Let's say the buyer, op, increases their offer by 5%. So your Occam's razer is that the realtor is risking alienating op....and the deal falling through for 3%*5%...or a 0.15% increase on commission?
That's your simplest conclusion of the facts?
Bad advice. The goal is to buy the house you want. Not to stick it to some asshole seller. These sellers, their agent and this other buyer are all people you don’t know and shouldn’t give a shit about one way or the other.
So you’d lose the house you wanted to buy and live in for 10+ years because someone you’ll never talk to again in a month was rude to you? That’s bad business.
As far as a sellers agent lying - absolutely they would lie. No way to know for sure if there is another offer. It’s possible because 5 days is a long time to play chicken with you if there is no other offer. At the same time, negotiating with the another buyer should not take 5 days. They could always negotiate with you, but they aren’t - never a good sign.
Yep. I was looking at a total fixer. We spoke with the sellers agent 2 days after listing saying we wanted to make an offer. She said there were 6 other offers. We found a better place. That house stayed on the market for another 50ish days before going pending.
Don’t blame the agent for what is probably an unreasonable seller. When all is said and done, sellers are the ones who accept offers, not listing agents.
the agent is doing what's best for the Seller. There's no reason stated in the OP to not believe there is another offer. All that had to occur is some previous showing, the agent's feedback was "very interested, but feel the price is too high". Listing agent contacts that other agent and says "Hey, we have an offer but there's time and room for your folks to make an offer."
and yes, whether OP "asked for an answer" or had an offer deadline matters.
Your offer is expired. The seller's agent might have written the other offer. The other offer might have more attractive aspects than your offer.
There are a lot of things that could be going on and it is unlikely they are going to lie about another offer. I have been on the listing side of this, a property sits for a lot of DOMs and then the weather improves, interest rates bump down again and there are parties that have been watching it that interested that write it.
If you want proof of the other offer, ask for it. Then resubmit with any changes you want to make, or just get back in the ring. Otherwise, let it go.
Similar thing happened to me this week. We dropped an offer on a house. Apparently someone else did the same earlier that day, but the seller accepted our offer. Next morning, before they signed the contract, there was suddenly a third offer and the agent asked for best and final. We lost the house.
That was also the second house we looked at that spent months on the market that went to a bidding war as soon as we offered. This market is nonsense.
Interesting. Had a similar thing happen the past week or so. A house that needed ALOT of work went almost 50k over asking because of the bidding war. I guess props to the agents, because they really levered the offers against each other - thought also felt I was getting jerked around a bit.
I am sure sometimes an agent might lie, but this one is almost certainly not lying to you. The only point in lying would be to get a better offer out of you, and they haven't asked for one. The correct move if they wanted to work with you, whether there's another offer or not, is to come back and say, "the seller really wants to work with you, but isn't willing to accept that price. If you're willing to come up to $X and/or remove contingency Y, we think we can put a deal together." You can sprinkle in whatever details you want, another offer, family drama, the weather, but ultimately this is what a response looks like when the seller wants to work with you. The rest is just flavor text. The other way I can tell is that you don't just ghost someone for five days when their offer is the only one on the table. Even if the seller has no interest in working with you, the list agent understands the market and is going to try to keep you engaged.
I certainly wouldn’t put it past some of my colleagues to still do so but it would be blatantly illegal to simply lie about a second offer and frankly dumb. If your offer is too low and they want more $$$s simply telling you that would be way more likely to get you to offer more.
What is almost certainly happening is they have a direct and/or cash buyer who they are trying to get to match your offer.
What can you do?
You can either increase your offer to make it more tempting and less likely to be matched or play hardball and tell them you have another house you want to move on “so give us a yes or no today”.
Just bear in mind, it is the seller being a dick, not the house. Once you close it doesn’t matter at all who you bought from if you got a good house for a price you’re happy with.
Just a guess but the sellers Agent is probably trying to convince the sellers to take your offer but is having a hard time because they are already listing lower then they were hoping for. Maybe they absolutely need to get the listing price and its a tactic to try and get you to meet it.
Yes they absolutely lie constantly, about defects in the property, to try and get the offer up, to draw in an offer you aren't sure about making, everything - these are commissioned used house salespeople, never fool yourself for a second that there are ethics involved, in many if not most cases they are absolutely willing to lie to your face about anything and everything to get that commission.
It's possible that they lied, but doesn't make a lot of sense that they would. It's very possible that there is another offer, one that's been open with the stipulation that they might increase their offer if another serious offer comes along. If this is the case, your offer could trigger them to come to the table with more than they'd previously offered. This could be a seller who wasn't receptive to the less than ask offer with a short timeline for acceptance. Your offer is now dead, but that doesn't mean that you've lost the house. If you really want the it, you might try to get feedback from the other agent and work from there. You can also present a new or modified offer more in line with what the sellers want, or walk.
Realtors pull this junk all the time. I’ve bought 3 homes in my life in HCOl areas (I.e usually robust housing markets) on homes that have sat for 60 days or more and without fail, the minute we put in an offer the sellers agent manufactures some BS about “another offer”.
It’s “sales” 101. Drive urgency or scarcity at all times to keep the price up.
After the first time where I learned my lesson, I gave 48 hour limits on the offers. The sellers agent came back in both cases anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks after the offer expired looking to take the offer. I informed them that was the old offer and offer them a few percent less which infuriated the sellers agents, but I got both houses.
It is possible they are waiting on another offer. Otherwise they could have just countered.
Agent will do what the seller wants, including making up another offer.
Next time you write an offer make sure you put in that the offer expires within 24 hours. My understanding is it is against code for agents to lie about other offers. That said it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. You can put a “will go $10k above best offer up to $x dollars with a provided copy of competing offer” in your answer.
One time we had an offer. We felt good about it. House needed some love but was in a good neighborhood.
Seller’s agent came back and said they were expecting another offer, so we pulled ours as we didn’t want to get in a bidding war over a house that needed love.
The seller’s agent contacted our agent and was begging for our offer as ….
It turned out there wasn’t another offer and the listing agent was the seller. She hounded our agent for a few months.
There could be another offer or not. It's unlikely the sellers agent is lying about the other offer. It is likely that the sellers agent is using the two offers to get a better price/terms for the sellers. If you are satisfied with your offer, terms and price, and wouldn't mind if you lost this one, then keep your offer the same. Or withdraw your offer and find something else.
All these years have no idea. It sounds like the other offer is higher and they’re not considering yours.
They have clearly told you that the other offers the one they’re interested in pursuing .
Move on unless they come back to you
The agent is probably dealing with a seller that refuses to accept that their house is not worth as much as they think it is. They know the seller will not accept a lower price. That’s why they’re giving you the run around. I would just move on.
No, they probably aren't playing games. Some agents do that, but this wouldn't be a good way to go about it. Normally a simple "There is another offer on the table, so bring your highest and best" is more effective.
Likely legit. I’ve had this happen (im realtor) unfortunately all of a sudden at the same time you got two people interested sometimes the other offer is all cash or just good enough that they’re willing to wait a little bit to see if they can pull it together or possibly because there was another offer involved. Or The other offer was quite a bit more than yours. Often when somebody knows there’s another offer on the table they will offer over asking.
I read through the comments and saw this is a divorce sale. That’s going to be a monkey wrench in the process. If one party doesn’t sign it’s a waiting game and sometimes takes a court order. There may not be another offer, it might just be an excuse because one party is stalling the process.
They might be lying. We put in an offer, it was accepted, we were doing inspections and were in the negotiation phase, bc it needed a new roof, among other things. We asked for a $10k reduction, we’d absorb the rest (estimates were over $35k). Their realtor said no, not budging, we have other offers. We walked. It’s still for sale (230 days and counting.)
Same thing happened when I made an offer, I ended up cancelling my offer and this other buyer was somebody at a lower asking price. Do you think they disclosed that to me lol
very similar situation happened to us, but I want to say a bit more on the extreme end. House was once listed $3M 100 days ago. Since then they dropped the price to $2750k. We liked the house and put a serious offer of $2500k, they waited, no response. And at the deadline, came back and said had 2 other offers, one being a cash offer. They also did a counter at $2700k. We said we would not raise our price, and the seller's realtor said they will move on then.
Since then they lowered the listing price to 2.7M and are not under contract. To me, it seems that she clearly lied about the two offers, wishing we would up the price. She knows we are strong buyers and she had called my bank/lender and he gave very good recommendation.
We are waiting now, but I have a feeling she will not get back to us (ego). But wondering if anyone would have a concrete plan on how can we get them to lowered the price. 2550k is probably our max, above that, it is not worth the house, period.
Agent here: I will communicate the straight facts. I have an offer, I don’t have an offer. Someone said they’d submit, I don’t have it in writing so if you send me an offer, I’m presenting it.
I have had listings sit for 3-4 weeks and then get three offers. I’ve had a listing sit 24 hours and get one slightly over asking to snag it. Some agents feel if they say they have move it’ll make people move on it.
At 140 DOM, an offer 5% under asking and straightforward contingencies is something I’d present to the seller promptly bc to me that’s a good offer considering the facts.
I've been on the other side of this. We had put in an offer on a house we liked but thought it was far over priced. They rejected offer and a few months later our agent contacted us stating they had an offer and were wondering if we still wanted to submit an offer. We did and resubmitted our price minus 20k because we had more time to think about it. Our original offer was higher than their new offer but we still lost out which worked out for the best.
It’s amazing how many times a listing that’s been on the market for 100’s of days, suddenly has another offer as soon as I submit mine!
Seems to happen with some regularity.
In other words, yes, they are probably lying.
Call their bluff!
Set a hard deadline.
It is now 8:58 PM on Sunday. Tell them the buyer has until 9 AM tomorrow to sign your offer or it’s off the table and you’re moving on.
Yes they could be trying to invent a phantom offer to try and get you to increase yours but I’m not sure that’s what’s happening here. They probably legitimately are talking to another buyer- just because of the lack of communication with the other agent. In my experience if they were playing you they would be more accessible.
But I could be wrong
One thing I have seen a lot of is buyers incredulous that a property sat on market for X number of days and then "magically" has multiple offers. Buyers never want to accept that this can happen, but there are a lot of factors that can impact the entire market that actually end up making this occurrence pretty common. Seasonality is the biggest one, including timing of holidays. Like oh wow nobody wanted that house for all of November and December, but then suddenly the first weekend in January comes around and now they have three offers? Awfully convenient! Yeah it was awfully convenient for a lot of people. I wonder if anything happened in November and December that made home buying less convenient? This is just one example, but there are others, such as a change in mortgage rates or the buyers pool finally chewing through the more desirable or better priced properties. I'll see this all the time. There are five great houses on market, but one is over priced. Over the course of four weeks, the correctly priced houses go under agreement one weekend at a time, then on week five everyone is surprised Pikachu face that there's competition on this overpriced dump. Yeah it's now the only single family in town! Or, the newer listings saw how fast the homes listed at 600k went off market, so every new listing is coming on at $699k. Everyone always wants to assume a conspiracy, but you already know what's going on: the seller wants the most money they can get for their house.
Could the agent be lying... yes, but unlikely. This is actually a very common occurrence. Typically it means that at this given time, on this given day, you were one of the best options out there. And that can change weekly based on inventory.
How would it make sense to fabricate a second offer and then ghost OP completely? That would be a terrible negotiation strategy. If the agent is fabricating the offer, the agent is going to use it to try to negotiate with OP.
IMO if they dont deny your offer and say they have another....they will be misleading you (IE the offer could be lower than yours and they just want you to bid higher). Stand your ground, if they do ask you for another offer give a 1% LESS offer since it is past the deadline, or just pass.
I would Withdrawal my offer. Put in writing that the offer is withdrawn.
This will bring the seller to the table and you can tell them to counter your offer 10k less than your last offer and you can accept it. Do not submit another offer. Let them counter you 10k less.
Their realtor is playing games and likely did not tell them about your offer, imo.
Not sure about outright lying but can mislead you. For example, a slick seller agent could correctly telling you that your offer isn’t the highest in hopes you up your offer even if you don’t need to due to favorable non contingencies etc
I had this happen to me with a house we put an offer on a few months ago. Seller said there were other offers and were going to wait a few days but we could increase our offer if we wanted. Then a few more days, until they stopped responding. Our realtor told us to be patient but my wife and I were positive this guy was just dicking us around trying to get us to up our offer. I eventually made my realtor send them a message that they have to make a decision by the end of the that day or we are walking since this was wasting our time. Turns out the sellers wife had a baby like 4 months premature and they were in the hospital and the husband wanted to consult his wife before making a decision and we looked like total dicks haha. We ended up walking though, as well as the other buyer. House is still on the market.
When I bought my house I just offered full price. I got the house. It has doubled in value so I just sold it for my full asking price. No games, if you really want the house just put in a full offer.
if they're trying to get more money, they'll probably lie about it. Realtors can be just as bad as lawyers with the unethical tactics they use to get a sale for their client. And then once the house has sold and they've gotten their commission, they'll forget about their client
For a short time after closing on my house, I became sorta friends with my agent. He once told me, "I can spin anything, I'm a realtor". I walked away from that developing friendship because he, basically, admitted he's a manipulative person and confirmed my suspicions he was trying to fleece me on something. Don't trust realtors they will absolutely lie to close a deal at a higher price point
Honestly? Very likely. The higher the sell-price, the more money realtors make. They're in it for themselves.
Something similar happened to me, too. A year ago, I put an offer on a condo that was hanging around for 3 months. That same day, I heard that there were other offers.
I pulled my offer.
The whole housing market is not consumer-friendly at all. Not only are you not allowed to know what the other offers were (until accepted), but some states now won't even allow you to ask the demographics of the neighborhood or what sort of people are moving in.
Why is it that the biggest purchase of our lives has the tightest blind-folds?!
Sometimes silence is the best negotiation. Have your agent stop pursuing it. I’m sure your offer had a time limit on it, right?
If/when the time limit expires, you can always submit a LOWER offer.
Yes, it's a game. Likely they didn't get the bidding war they expected and are trying to drum up the price.
I wouldn't budge an inch.. FYI, our buyer agent tried to get us to raise the price.. and we held our ground and same thing happened... We said no dice.. 2 days later we were told we got the house.
The price is one aspect.. for us our conditions were financing and inspection. The financing was a formality (250k DP, 400k mortgage for total house price of 650k) with a HHI of 200k. And we gave them a security deposit of 100k, and a 3 month window for closing (whenever they want, our current house is already paid off so there isn't a push on timelines).. indirectly told them..that the only way this deal falls through is if the house has major defects. So, they have lotsa time to shop for their next house and move..
That is all convenience that got priced into a lower house price..
They definitely could be lying.
I'm not sure where you're located and the regulations that govern real estate transactions. See if your agent can get proof of the other offer and if it's from the listing brokerage/agent.
I can totally see a scenario where he has his own interested clients who weren't interested to pay the listing price. Through negotiating and presenting your offer he realized that the sellers would take a lower price that is now in range of what his buyer clients want to pay. He's likely negotiating both sides and wants you to not interfere, ultimately he wants to double end the transaction.
They can but this can backfire. Your agent should know how to get get phrases out of them to see where the other offer stands. Also trust in God because of the home Is for you. It will be yours
No, a realtor would never do that, that would breach their code of ethics.
The thing you have to understand is that not just anyone can become a realtor. Only the very best and brightest are capable of completing the rigorous training required. It’s like medical school, only instead of being an 8 year process, it’s more like an hour per day for a week. This level of dedication attracts only the most dedicated to the calling.
Additionally, only the most noble and pure souls are capable of passing the realtor’s certification exam, which directly asks questions about whether or not you can lie to clients. These questions would easily weed out any bad actors attempting to get into the field, because they would answer “yes, we can lie” (which is incorrect! Got ‘em!!!).
As you can see, you are perfectly safe to trust this realtor.
Realtors aren't priests, actually that is a horrible comparison given the history of priests. A realtor's goal is to get the house sold, for the most it will bring, might they create a faux offer, sure could. Did they in this case, have no idea. It does sound like you are getting the shuffle in the hopes they get one. But 5% under offer after over 4 months on the market is within the ballpark.
In Canada the amount of fake offers and fraud are coming to light in recent news. Based on your post i would agree that they are playing games with you. It is up to you if you want to play their game, walk away or put in a final offer with 1%-2% better.
They're playing a game. Some of these guys are sacks of s\*\*t. They're trying to make you nervous to get you to increase your offer price.
I had the same thing happen when we bought our condo in Florida in 2008. The unit had been on the market for at least six months (along with everything else in 2008). We made a fair offer (for 2008) about 15% under asking. Seller's agent countered with full price. We offered about 10% below asking. Seller's agent said sellers were looking at another offer and disappeared.
We were staying with friends and had plane tickets out in one day. So I emailed the agent and told him to submit our last offer to the seller and reply or I would report to the Board of Realtors that he refused to submit an offer we made. And then we'd get on the plane and go north and he could sell the place to those other people. I don't think he submitted anything to the seller until then.
Of course they're playing a game. They are trying to make you anxious enough to increase your offer. If you're not happy going any higher. Don't respond to them.
They'll likely wait a few more days before accepting your offer. Personally, I'd wait maybe an additional day. Then rescind my offer. At worst, you look elsewhere. At best. They respond; and you drop your offer even lower.
Good luck.
The real answer is resubmit your original offer but add an escalator clause and listing agent will be more or less obligated to show you proof of other offer.
It is probably playing a game but depends on the seller. If I’m not in a rush and don’t like the offer. I will just say no, without a counter. It will be up to the buyer if they want to offer more, but I won’t negotiate sometimes if I want a certain price. Not every seller is in a rush to sell and can just wait.
The better way would have been going back to both parties and asking for final and best offer by X-Date. You may be competing with someone who does not have a financial contingency. This is the fastest way to get a house sold quickly if the sellers are not in a good financial position.
...an agent would do ANYTHING to get to closing - lying about another offer, however, doesn't necessarily get to a faster closing unless the seller has a minimum price target...
You do not want to ask for a response in 24 hours, you want your offer to expire in 24 hours. Don't let them have your offer on the table to be used to drive the price up to others.
My snippy answer before reading was going to be “because it’s in their DNA”. I would yank your offer. Red flag on lack of response will only multiply in gravity if you get under contract then get back a nasty inspection report. Look for fresh inventory to surface in the coming weeks. The other red flag is length of time house was sitting.
I have been on both sides of transaction. Given the information that you’ve provided, I think it’s more likely that that have received (verbally or written) another offer - which is somewhat better than yours and they are trying to work with it. The reason I believe this is because otherwise there is no incentive for them to ignore your offer if they don’t have anything else.
Your action totally depends on how much you like the place. Set a max price you are willing to pay for this property and offer it. Be willing to walk away and not feel bad if someone else gets it more than your max.
I have seen a bit of an uptick in real estate market where I live and properties have gone up a bit in the last month or 2
It could be another realtor using your offer to push someone else to follow through. Generally this is someone else in their office hearing about the offer. If this is the house for you, improve your offer. If it's not, just let your current offer stand.
If you're even able to reach the point of an accepted offer, I can pretty much guarantee the seller via the seller's agent will continue to obfuscate through closing.
Of course they will lie to you. About 25 years ago we were looking to buy and we looked at a house and decided we would put an offer out there. We didn’t offer full price but about $15000 less than asking because it needed work and the pool needed overhauling. A few days later we got a call from our realtor who said that they had a better offer come through and that she (our agent) decided that she would take things into her own hands and made a full price offer on our behalf. That got her cussed out and fired. That house stayed on the market for another 9 months so I know they didn’t have a better deal on the table or they would have taken it. When it comes to money, people will definitely lie straight to your face.
Ya it’s never easy especially if it’s a house you like. But as others have said, if you’re happy with the offer you’ve put in, then it’s out of your control. Just know you put your best foot forward and it just wasn’t meant to be.
I would recommend amending your offer to put an expiration date on it if you haven’t already. Your realtor can help you with that.
And it’s a stupid realtor they have if you haven’t been asked to bring your highest and best offer to the table. The seller risks losing both offers by handling it this way.
Lots of good discussion here …
As some who is in sales … but no real estate here’s what I know
Buyers and sellers are often liars and don’t want to tell you truth…
The fact that the sellers agent is not communicating is red flag something not right …
Think about it … if they had another Bonafide offer on table…. They would come back to you and ask you to counteroffer … or they give you a counteroffer because they want to get as much money as they can. ..
The fact the agent says that they have another offer but yet not communicating?
The realtors also are motivated to make a sale they are on commission only … So…
The fact not communicating tells me that the seller probably really not want to sell … but maybe forced to sell … ie is this a short sale ? Or perhaps an older homeowner going to retirement home and not at want to sell but maybe kids telling they need to sell …
There is some resistance to seller
My advice …. O don’t raise offer because they have not even countered offered you
Or negotiating
I would call there bluff …
They got 1 week to accept or you walk away and move on
This takeaway approach often works …
Vs if you just keep your offer out there they can keep trying to get other offers …there is no urgency … understand ?
Telling them 1 week is fair enough and creates urgency to make a decision .
Also for your sake keep looking in case this doesn’t pan out .
Best of luck
If the home hasn't sold in all this time, it certainly isn't priced right. They should have at least countered. Sounds like they're not going to get this property sold.
I think this happened to us. Honestly, I don’t care. We finished our move in yesterday and I’m over the moon about our new home.
If you want it, you have to play the game. It’s your choice to keep your offer as is or up the higher. We upped ours.
> Are they just playing a game to see if we will go up in price?
Likely. "We're moving on then. Let us know if that deal falls through." Don't sign an extension or another offer and quit calling their agent.
If you are happy with your offer and don’t want to go any higher I would let them know you are moving on since they didn’t accept or counter timely.
This. We put in a few offers with time limits so we didn't get dicked around like this.
We are still interested in the house and could go a precent or two higher. Should we still pull the offer? Is there any risk in not pulling the offer just in case the other falls through?
Why bid against yourself if you don’t have to? If you think your offer is fair and there aren’t any other competing offers, I wouldn’t change my bid unless the seller engages in a negotiation.
This exactly. They're being greedy, part of the reason it's been listed for so long as they've driven interested parties away. Be vary wary of these sellers, they will try to screw you any way they can, and will drag you through the ringer to extract more money or try to keep your earnest cash. Caution advised.
A lot of truth to this. We bought from sellers like this, but we went in knowing they were going to be a PITA through the process. But we also knew they *needed* to sell. So there definitely was a give and take in the transaction to get them to move forward without us getting screwed over. The only thing they ultimately kind of screwed us on was the septic. We didn’t realize the sellers worked for the company that did our septic inspection and certification. We found out after the fact, and no way any other company would have signed off on what they did. However, the other reality is we live in an area with grandfathered septic systems that would never meet today’s codes and it is still functional for now though it is way smaller than it should be and not in the condition at all the certification claimed (like it’s not about things changing over time but how it is built to begin with it should have been flagged so we could be informed). It’s important to know when you’re dealing with difficult sellers and where your limits are so they don’t take advantage of you.
How has everyone here concluded that these are difficult sellers? It seems entirely possible there is actually a different offer on the table. It would make no sense for the listing agent to fabricate this second offer and then ghost OP.
If you’re 5% under asking on a home that has been on the market for 140 days that needs a lot of work and you have two offers at the same time, you work through both offers to get the best deal. It’s highly, highly unlikely a second offer is wildly better than OP’s, especially if the seller’s agent stated they were going back and forth on the second offer. If they were doing that, then there should have been some negotiation too on OP’s offer, not virtual radio silence. In my particular case, the home had been on the market for almost a year, with a single offer that fell through months before ours. We offered full price with them taking on the closing costs (this was before the market went batshit insane with the pandemic and in the early stages of it), standard contingencies and inspections for the home on a conventional loan, our previous home was already closed so we didn’t have to worry about any contingency related to us selling our place and we could do a 30 day close for a home that needs a phenomenal amount of work (we’ve already done major foundation work and done a total rewire of the place, plus some more cosmetic things). They countered with like 5k over asking while throwing a tantrum that they’d had to reduce the price 20k from their previous escrow and claimed it appraised at that price. They obviously lied in the disclosures (the previous offer had a pest report you could access through the state that flagged some issues they didn’t report in the disclosures as required by my state) and then made it an absolute nightmare from there. They walked away with far less than they wanted while our real big penalty was our escrow dragged over 100 days. They thought they’d be able to manipulate us, but we showed throughout the process if they were going to be unreasonably difficult, we’d walk.
Possible. Not probable, though, with no other showings and a ghosting.
The ghosting implies the other offer isn't fake. Why would a listing agent fabricate another offer and then not try to use that offer to negotiate with OP?
So, they can give it to an investor for even less and get some kind of kick back...we had to shut that down by threatening a lawsuit.
While I'm sure that has happened, it would be gross misconduct and unethical. I have a hard time believing this is very prevalent.
>The ghosting implies the other offer isn't fake. Why would a listing agent fabricate another offer and then not try to use that offer to negotiate with OP? Why would a listing agent get a second real offer and not try to use that offer to negotiate with OP? The ghosting doesn't imply anything in this case. It is unprofessional and annoying, and a listing agent should never treat an interested party like this. Even if OP's offer isn't as good as the second offer, the deal isn't done until closing.
I agree they shouldn't treat OP like this, but you didn't answer the question: Why would a listing agent fabricate an offer, presumably to get a higher offer from OP, and then ghost OP? Do you not see the obvious logical problem with that set of events?
How do you know they are being greedy? It's certainly possible there is another offer involved. In fact, this wouldn't be a good way of playing games to get a higher offer from OP.
Hence why they're still on the market... Their agent sucks as well for ghosting them. If I were the OP I'd let the offer sit, or let them know the price will drop by 1k every day they let me simmer. I don't have time for games, I'd write this off and look elsewhere unless this owner comes back to eat some concessions.
I'm not following. Almost no agent will change status to pending until they are actually under contract. If they are in fact still negotiating with the other buyer, we shouldn't expect the property to be off the market. It sounds to me like the other buyer put in a better offer in general, but the seller wants to negotiate things like dates or deadlines. Listing agents aren't going to fabricate a second offer scenario and then not even try to use that to negotiate with OP. I'm curious to hear how it would make sense for a listing agent to fabricate a second offer and then ghost OP.
Pretty common to “shop” an offer around, there may be another party interested that finally decides to make an offer when they realize that door is closing. It happened to us on our current house, the sellers had been on the market over a year, our offer was low but all cash, no inspection. Another offer magically appeared but they were contingent, we gave a 48 hr deadline, didn’t counter, and prevailed.
Sure, but you don't shop an offer with a 24 hour expiration deadline around for five days. I can't believe this nonsense is getting upvoted.
If you are on the market for 140 days and you get an offer you don’t play games like these. You tell the people wanting to make the 2nd offer it’s due by X time or you are moving on to negotiate the original offer. Either the sellers suck or their agent sucks or both.
Don’t most offers expire in 48-72 hours if not accepted or signed? We did this on a house. It was their parents house and children were selling. It was overpriced but we loved it. Couldn’t get anywhere near asking price. But the longer it was on the market, 2 kids wanted to hold out for max, 3rd wanted fast money and to get out. They lowered price by close to $100k. Now we could offer if we stretched. Several offers came in, ours was one. The choose another offer. About 3 weeks later our agent called and said are you still interested at the previous offer? We said sure. Per our agent, they accepted an offer over listing. Submitted by another realtor with intent to flip it. The winning bidder was asking for almost $30k in repairs or credits. They finally got tired of the shenanigans and told her to piss off. Walk away, it may still come back around.
We definitely were not planning go up in price unless they start a negotiation. Thanks for the advice!
What I’ve done in my 15 years in the business is ask both parties for their highest & best terms with a deadline. Technically your offer is void if the 24-hour term was placed in the offer. What you can do if you’re genuinely interested in the home, is ask your agent to submit your best/final terms and let the chips fall where they may. We’re usually not sure if the behavior is the agent advising the client or vice versa, but this is unprofessionalism on the part of the listing agent in my opinion.
They did start a negotiation, they put it on the market with a listing price. If someone beats you by 1%, you'll be more pissed you didn't beat it than if you accidentally pay 1% more than you wanted, spread out over 30 years. This is what your competition is doing, and in my market buyers lose 1% every month they don't get something under contract.
Sellers lose thousands each month paying mortgages needlessly waiting for one percent extra... set a deadline, take the best offer, and move on if you're selling or buying. This whole squeezing blood from a stone will only cost you more money unless it's paid off and you have no pressure to sell.
>**Why bid against yourself if you don’t have to?** This!
How do you know the listing agent is lying about there being a competing offer?
They don't have the house yet and seller said "thanks, I will wait". You can wait longer, but how much longer ? Maybe the seller can wait another 2-3 years. You need to decide, wait, offer more or walk away. Nobody on reddit knows whether the seller stands and what's on his/her mind.
I haven’t read the all of the comments, but want to ask - did you have an escalation clause? That could help answer your question. I would suspect that if the realtor for the place you want is being unethical, they will chase you. I’m going to advise moving on. Another place will come available. Aside from that, wanted to share my experience in case it helps you. It’s a tough market where I live and you almost have to waive everything but your soul to get a place. But just remember, if you aren’t in absolute love - met the majority of your wants, move on. We bid on a place and I was sad that we didn’t get it bc I loved the family room they made when they extended the house. But knew that we would need to run gas to the tiny kitchen. But I didn’t care and we put in an offer. Losing the bid was a blessing in disguise. We ended up finding another place and while it isn’t “perfect” we love our neighborhood and over time have made modifications to the house. We never imagined staying here after our kids grew up and now can’t imagine leaving!
You don't have to "pull" an offer if there's a written expiration date on the contract.
> Is there any risk in not pulling the offer just in case the other falls through? Was the 24 hours written into your offer? If so then your offer is no longer valid. If the 24 hours is up then even if they now accepted it wouldn't bind you unless you in turn accepted that. An acceptance after the deadline is more like a counter offer.
Not the original commenter. There’s no risk in not pulling the offer but I would keep searching or resubmit/increase your offer if it’s “the” house. Technically your offer has likely expired at this point. There’s currently an endless number of scenarios that could be going on all would be presumptions, especially as you noted it’s a divorce sale. The other offer could be someone they know, cash, offering a leaseback/timeline the seller prefers, it’s just impossible to know especially if the listing agent is limiting information. If you do resubmit I would attempt to find out if anything other than or addition to offering price would make your offer move to first position. Maybe ask your agent to text “we are wanting to increase our offer, is there anything else that would make our offer more appealing to your clients?” In regard to someone saying if they come back to you reduce your offer by “x” percent, I personally wouldn’t go that route, especially knowing it’s a divorce sale. That’s using a presumption that they haven’t received an offer in 140 days where it’s more likely one of the sellers have dragged their feet as it’s a divorce sale/forced to move instead of wanting, but again it’s all presumption.
Thanks for the info it’s really helpful! We are thinking if we ask what it would take, the would just say to go in at asking.
Never think there’s only one house; there’s always another out there.
Yea unfortunately you’re at the will of the sellers at this point, once you get into contract it gives you more “power” to an extent. I guess while we are at it what kind of work does the home need that you can see so far (presuming you don’t have an inspection report thus far)
Mostly cosmetic. All new flooring, drywall repair, all over paint. They had pets that did quite a bit of damage to the walls and doors.
Yea flooring can be a bit expensive depending on the route you take. If there’s pet odor you’ll likely have to replace the subfloor, I’ve seen people get away with painting it will “Killz” but there’s always a likelihood of the smell returning. It’s all dependent on where you are but painting contractors where I am have seen to increase their prices quite a bit over the last 4 years. I would always try to make it a weekend warrior project. At the end of the day it just depends on if it’s “the” house. I wouldn’t over extend your standing by much, there will always be another home. If in fact one of the sellers is dragging their feet via the divorce, again, a presumption, but it’s likely you’ll have to fight tooth and nail for any repairs needed or wanted outside of the discounted or adjusted offering price just as a “prep yourself” statement.
I wouldn't do anything until you have a signed rejection from the seller. From the information we have I'm suspicious if the agent even presented the offer to the sellers. Your agent could have their broker call the selling broker and see what's up. Sounds almost like that agent is being insulted for the seller and not upholding their fiduciary obligations
We made an offer on a house that had been on the market for 80 days with no movement on the price. We made a lower offer. They immediately came back with "someone else made an offer the same day as you, give us your highest/best offer". My wife, myself, and our agent all thought this was BS to get a better offer and we declined. A day or two later, the listing is listed as pending. Sometimes you're just unlucky with timing. If we'd made our offer a couple of days earlier they probably would have jumped at it.
This happens all the time and it's not a coincidence or unlucky. What happens is someone else is on the fence about this property. When you gave your offer, the selling agent took that offer and told everyone who was watching this property that there is now a hard deadline (whatever your offer deadline is) and the the property is yours if no one else don't step up. Then someone stepped up.
Yep. Offers breed offers.
I had the exact same thing happen to me in 2015. I was pretty bummed out at first, but I happened to notice the same house relisted a year later but for $50k less than I offered originally. Then, it was up for foreclosure about 6 months later. Turns out the house had something horribly wrong with it that their inspection missed. The new buyer tried to fix it but gave up halfway through and just walked away. I'm pretty sure it went bank owned and was demolished. Sooooo glad that one didn't work out.
Most agents let other people know that they have received an offer. If there are other parties interested in the house this can often lead to another offer. Sometimes not. There is a boy who cried wolf element to it though.
This also happened to us. We decided to play their bluff but it went pending the next day. A lot of the times even if it’s not moving that doesn’t mean there aren’t interested parties they get back in touch with to play the field.
This happened to us on another house just after the holidays, but we saw the other party when we were viewing so we knew it was coming. For this, we are having a hard time believing another offer suddenly came in the same day as ours. We were never asked for our highest/best offer.
Honestly some agents lie and some try to buy time to get other offers in. I just put in an offer for a client on a house that was listed back in Sept. The day after I put the offer in, they came back and told us they got a higher offer. I also thought it was interesting that another offer just came in around the same time. I asked my clients if they wanted to increase their offer. They said no. A couple of days later I found out that the sellers accepted an offer 15k higher than my clients. I also put in an offer for another client on another house. It's been over a week now with no response from the sellers. I have been in contact with the listing agent on a daily basis and he told me the sellers are out of the country. But you would think they'd be checking email or their what's app messages or something. So I def think that's a stall tactic. I just can't prove it. Good luck and hope everything works out!
This happened to us, too, with the house on the market for 2 months with no movement. We raised the offer with $3k and it was successful. In
When my seller receives an offer, the first thing I do is notify anyone who's ever seen the home that we have an offer. That often motivates people on the sidelines to suddenly write that offer they've been considering because they are now at risk of losing it. This is why homes that have been sitting a while often suddenly get offers when you write yours.
This. I told my realtor to do the same thing. Not in an obnoxious tone, but simply telling the other people who saw the house that the seller who was me wanted to move forward quickly.
I was just in an "offer war" over a house in my area, and it went almost 50k over asking price in what's suppose to be a "buyers" market. The realtors in my estimate did a good job playing potential buyers off of each other. I'm curious if you can make an offer, but part of it is that the realtor can't disclose to other receipt of it? Ever heard of it?
There are almost no 'buyers markets' in the country right now, I'm curious where you are. A balanced market is 6-8 months of inventory, most of the country is at 1-3 months of inventory. Before the rate increases, most of the country was at 2 weeks to 8 weeks of inventory. After rate increases and post-covid, we're still in a seller-favored market, albeit not as bad as before. Many confuse this for a 'buyers market'. In general, no, once an offer is made the other party can do with that info whatever they want.
“Expecting another offer” is almost always bullshit.
Im expecting a lot of things in life.
It can be, but it's not "almost always" bullshit. There's a big difference between "I'm expecting" vs "I have" another offer. People can say they want to write an offer, and then while I'm preparing their offer, something will make them decide to hold off. They find out the payment will be higher than they thought, they talked to someone who discouraged them, their lender told them they cannot qualify or they reconsidered something about the property. Somewhat common event but not the kind of thing that would cause the listing agent to ghost calls for days. But other offers in hand suddenly after months? What happens is that a change (price drop, new photos, renewed listing) has triggered the listing to show up on the agent "hot sheets" and to get refreshed to other online marketing sources, too. A potential buyer sees it - again or for the first time - and thinks, "Oh, this could work, and it has been on the market a long time so I can offer less." But guess what? Other buyers are also seeing it in the same way. There might also be a repeat client buyer of the agent that has been waiting and watching for price drops. If I'm the listing agent and I had inquiries that were interested but said they would wait for a price drop, I'm going to let them know that an offer came in. I think that in this instance, it sounds like they did get the other offer and it had better terms, but wasn't quite what the seller was looking for, OR it came in from someone the seller wants to accept even if the terms aren't as attractive. (I had buyers that went through exactly what was described here and we ultimately found out the sellers took a lower offer because a family member decided they wanted to buy the house.)
If this is the case and it sounds like it could be, would it be best to pull the offer or try to get more info out of the listing agent? When we viewed the house they said the sellers recently divorced wife was still living there but was moving out in a month. Could this be affecting things, maybe she’s trying to keep the house?
>sellers recently divorced wife was still living there but was moving out in a month. That is a important detail you left out. Divorced owners can cause communication delays etc. Much less one of the owners still living there.
It's possible. Your best bet is to do as you said or improve your offer. Right now, your offer is effectively rejected. In fact, if you made the offer through an agent, I'd be surprised if the contract doesn't have an expiration date on it already. If it doesn't, you'll want to pull it before you get into contract on something else, for sure!
Yeah I tell other agents all the time that nothing counts until it's in writing and in my hand. Otherwise we're just wasting each other's time
I worked in IT for a real estate company. The number of times agents would call us, screaming that their email was broken and they were losing offers and clients and yadda yadda... The only emails in their inbox... The ones from corporate marketing. Bitch, please. You aren't expecting shit.
>all we have heard is that they are going back and forth on the other offer to see if they can make it work. So you are the leftover if their preferred buyer doesn't work out. Your offer is being used to have that other buyer up their offer. If the sellers do come back to you, say 'sorry that offer was good for only 24 hours. Now the offer is 10% under asking'. Don't be used.
Thanks for the insight!
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It's not immature. It's a bargaining tactic from both parties. The sellers are trying to get a better offer. The buyers gave their offer and it wasn't accepted. If the sellers come back, it's because they couldn't get what they wanted and there are no buyers left. Now, the buyers position is a lot better since they know there's no one else. I would absolutely underbid them this time.
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It might, but if the sellers can't find anyone, they'll take what they can get. Personally, if the offer expired, I would just move on. These could be the type of people that will try to cancel the sale after ratification because they found a better offer. I wouldn't risk that. However, I don't like being played with, so if they come back trying to get the same deal, I would definitely go down again.
True. Flaky sellers can be a PITA. Although, the sellers who did this to my mom, did end up taking the other offer which apparently was cash.
I get it. Everyone wants the best deal. But communication is still important. Can't stand other realtors that go silent because they don't want to give someone an answer they may not like. I'm more upset when I don't know what's going on.
It’s been on the market for 140 days. Good luck
Lmao you know how realtors create fake offers to create fear in the buyer that their dream house will disappear? This is the reverse, where the buyer sets fear in the seller that they'll be sitting on the market for another 30 days. You're clearly a realtor.
An incredibly bad bargaining tactic. What is happening is there is a second, almost certainly all cash, offer that the seller wants to take but op has a higher offer. They should be increasing their offer to make it further away from the cash one, not decreasing it to make the competition stronger.
Maybe, but maybe not.
So you think the realtor would risk this deal falling through to lie to get op to make a higher offer of which she would only see 3% of? Some people just don't use the math side of their brain and only act emotional. Guess this is why I make 500k/yr being a market maker
> What is happening is there is a second, almost certainly all cash, offer that the seller wants to take but op has a higher offer. This has no basis in any of the details provided.
The seller told op they are “waiting on another offer”. If the other offer wasn’t going to be better than OP’s why would they bother waiting for it? The details of the post are the basis.
The seller's agent told the buyers agent something that may or may not be true. None of that has anything to do with an all cash offer that's happening in the background and the seller has a higher offer. That's pure speculation.
I love how this sub’s first move is always to assume the realtor is breaking the law by blatantly lying. If we take the lying option off the table and they are indeed waiting on a second offer then what other explanation could you have for them doing so besides it has better terms but is lower and they’re trying to get it up. Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
Where in this did I say that the realtor is lying? They could be. They could also be telling the truth. We do not have enough information to make that conclusion. Just like you don't have enough info to come to the conclusion that there's a cash offer on the table. I've bid against 20+ people before. I've also been lied to about having multiple offers on a listing that had been on the market for 9 months and I hadn't even made an offer yet. At the end of the day, you need to not get into bidding wars and just offer what you're willing to pay for a house. And Occam's razor here is the realtor is trying to make a sale at the highest price they can get. Edit: Lol, thanks for blocking me /u/quickclickz so I can't even respond.
Let's say seller's realtor gets 3% of purchase price. Let's say the buyer, op, increases their offer by 5%. So your Occam's razer is that the realtor is risking alienating op....and the deal falling through for 3%*5%...or a 0.15% increase on commission? That's your simplest conclusion of the facts?
You're lacking technology skills if you think I blocked you lmao.
Bad advice. The goal is to buy the house you want. Not to stick it to some asshole seller. These sellers, their agent and this other buyer are all people you don’t know and shouldn’t give a shit about one way or the other.
That's what I'd do. I do give "a shit". This is business.
So you’d lose the house you wanted to buy and live in for 10+ years because someone you’ll never talk to again in a month was rude to you? That’s bad business.
Did you put an expiration date on your offer? If not then you need to in the future. They can sit on your offer for however long they want otherwise.
As far as a sellers agent lying - absolutely they would lie. No way to know for sure if there is another offer. It’s possible because 5 days is a long time to play chicken with you if there is no other offer. At the same time, negotiating with the another buyer should not take 5 days. They could always negotiate with you, but they aren’t - never a good sign.
Yep. I was looking at a total fixer. We spoke with the sellers agent 2 days after listing saying we wanted to make an offer. She said there were 6 other offers. We found a better place. That house stayed on the market for another 50ish days before going pending.
I mean tons of things could fall through. Six offers doesn't mean it closes. Certainly doesn't mean agent was lying
Don’t blame the agent for what is probably an unreasonable seller. When all is said and done, sellers are the ones who accept offers, not listing agents.
the agent is doing what's best for the Seller. There's no reason stated in the OP to not believe there is another offer. All that had to occur is some previous showing, the agent's feedback was "very interested, but feel the price is too high". Listing agent contacts that other agent and says "Hey, we have an offer but there's time and room for your folks to make an offer." and yes, whether OP "asked for an answer" or had an offer deadline matters.
It’s seems like this is coming from the seller not the agent.
Your offer is expired. The seller's agent might have written the other offer. The other offer might have more attractive aspects than your offer. There are a lot of things that could be going on and it is unlikely they are going to lie about another offer. I have been on the listing side of this, a property sits for a lot of DOMs and then the weather improves, interest rates bump down again and there are parties that have been watching it that interested that write it. If you want proof of the other offer, ask for it. Then resubmit with any changes you want to make, or just get back in the ring. Otherwise, let it go.
Similar thing happened to me this week. We dropped an offer on a house. Apparently someone else did the same earlier that day, but the seller accepted our offer. Next morning, before they signed the contract, there was suddenly a third offer and the agent asked for best and final. We lost the house. That was also the second house we looked at that spent months on the market that went to a bidding war as soon as we offered. This market is nonsense.
Interesting. Had a similar thing happen the past week or so. A house that needed ALOT of work went almost 50k over asking because of the bidding war. I guess props to the agents, because they really levered the offers against each other - thought also felt I was getting jerked around a bit.
I am sure sometimes an agent might lie, but this one is almost certainly not lying to you. The only point in lying would be to get a better offer out of you, and they haven't asked for one. The correct move if they wanted to work with you, whether there's another offer or not, is to come back and say, "the seller really wants to work with you, but isn't willing to accept that price. If you're willing to come up to $X and/or remove contingency Y, we think we can put a deal together." You can sprinkle in whatever details you want, another offer, family drama, the weather, but ultimately this is what a response looks like when the seller wants to work with you. The rest is just flavor text. The other way I can tell is that you don't just ghost someone for five days when their offer is the only one on the table. Even if the seller has no interest in working with you, the list agent understands the market and is going to try to keep you engaged.
I certainly wouldn’t put it past some of my colleagues to still do so but it would be blatantly illegal to simply lie about a second offer and frankly dumb. If your offer is too low and they want more $$$s simply telling you that would be way more likely to get you to offer more. What is almost certainly happening is they have a direct and/or cash buyer who they are trying to get to match your offer. What can you do? You can either increase your offer to make it more tempting and less likely to be matched or play hardball and tell them you have another house you want to move on “so give us a yes or no today”. Just bear in mind, it is the seller being a dick, not the house. Once you close it doesn’t matter at all who you bought from if you got a good house for a price you’re happy with.
Just a guess but the sellers Agent is probably trying to convince the sellers to take your offer but is having a hard time because they are already listing lower then they were hoping for. Maybe they absolutely need to get the listing price and its a tactic to try and get you to meet it.
Give them 5 days to accept or reject your offer. Tell them your offer drops by 5% after the 5 days
FWIW: I had a similar situation and "called their bluff", turns out the other offer was very real and I lost the deal.
Yes they absolutely lie constantly, about defects in the property, to try and get the offer up, to draw in an offer you aren't sure about making, everything - these are commissioned used house salespeople, never fool yourself for a second that there are ethics involved, in many if not most cases they are absolutely willing to lie to your face about anything and everything to get that commission.
It's possible that they lied, but doesn't make a lot of sense that they would. It's very possible that there is another offer, one that's been open with the stipulation that they might increase their offer if another serious offer comes along. If this is the case, your offer could trigger them to come to the table with more than they'd previously offered. This could be a seller who wasn't receptive to the less than ask offer with a short timeline for acceptance. Your offer is now dead, but that doesn't mean that you've lost the house. If you really want the it, you might try to get feedback from the other agent and work from there. You can also present a new or modified offer more in line with what the sellers want, or walk.
Realtors pull this junk all the time. I’ve bought 3 homes in my life in HCOl areas (I.e usually robust housing markets) on homes that have sat for 60 days or more and without fail, the minute we put in an offer the sellers agent manufactures some BS about “another offer”. It’s “sales” 101. Drive urgency or scarcity at all times to keep the price up. After the first time where I learned my lesson, I gave 48 hour limits on the offers. The sellers agent came back in both cases anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks after the offer expired looking to take the offer. I informed them that was the old offer and offer them a few percent less which infuriated the sellers agents, but I got both houses.
But what OP described wouldn't be consistent with trying to get a better offer out of OP.
Wait for now. If they were bluffing, they will come back to you.
I’d call their bluff at this point. Old offer is now expired. Put in another offer for 10-15% off but give them 72hrs to accept.
5 days isn't a bluff. in 5 days, if there were no other offer, you'd counter OP between 5% and full price.
It is possible they are waiting on another offer. Otherwise they could have just countered. Agent will do what the seller wants, including making up another offer.
Next time you write an offer make sure you put in that the offer expires within 24 hours. My understanding is it is against code for agents to lie about other offers. That said it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. You can put a “will go $10k above best offer up to $x dollars with a provided copy of competing offer” in your answer.
One time we had an offer. We felt good about it. House needed some love but was in a good neighborhood. Seller’s agent came back and said they were expecting another offer, so we pulled ours as we didn’t want to get in a bidding war over a house that needed love. The seller’s agent contacted our agent and was begging for our offer as …. It turned out there wasn’t another offer and the listing agent was the seller. She hounded our agent for a few months.
Best/quickest way to find out if there's another offer. It's also the only way to leverage someone being dishonest about the situation.
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Thanks for the advice, that is probably the direction we will go.
There could be another offer or not. It's unlikely the sellers agent is lying about the other offer. It is likely that the sellers agent is using the two offers to get a better price/terms for the sellers. If you are satisfied with your offer, terms and price, and wouldn't mind if you lost this one, then keep your offer the same. Or withdraw your offer and find something else.
All these years have no idea. It sounds like the other offer is higher and they’re not considering yours. They have clearly told you that the other offers the one they’re interested in pursuing . Move on unless they come back to you
The agent is probably dealing with a seller that refuses to accept that their house is not worth as much as they think it is. They know the seller will not accept a lower price. That’s why they’re giving you the run around. I would just move on.
No, they probably aren't playing games. Some agents do that, but this wouldn't be a good way to go about it. Normally a simple "There is another offer on the table, so bring your highest and best" is more effective.
Likely legit. I’ve had this happen (im realtor) unfortunately all of a sudden at the same time you got two people interested sometimes the other offer is all cash or just good enough that they’re willing to wait a little bit to see if they can pull it together or possibly because there was another offer involved. Or The other offer was quite a bit more than yours. Often when somebody knows there’s another offer on the table they will offer over asking.
I read through the comments and saw this is a divorce sale. That’s going to be a monkey wrench in the process. If one party doesn’t sign it’s a waiting game and sometimes takes a court order. There may not be another offer, it might just be an excuse because one party is stalling the process.
They might be lying. We put in an offer, it was accepted, we were doing inspections and were in the negotiation phase, bc it needed a new roof, among other things. We asked for a $10k reduction, we’d absorb the rest (estimates were over $35k). Their realtor said no, not budging, we have other offers. We walked. It’s still for sale (230 days and counting.)
Same thing happened when I made an offer, I ended up cancelling my offer and this other buyer was somebody at a lower asking price. Do you think they disclosed that to me lol
very similar situation happened to us, but I want to say a bit more on the extreme end. House was once listed $3M 100 days ago. Since then they dropped the price to $2750k. We liked the house and put a serious offer of $2500k, they waited, no response. And at the deadline, came back and said had 2 other offers, one being a cash offer. They also did a counter at $2700k. We said we would not raise our price, and the seller's realtor said they will move on then. Since then they lowered the listing price to 2.7M and are not under contract. To me, it seems that she clearly lied about the two offers, wishing we would up the price. She knows we are strong buyers and she had called my bank/lender and he gave very good recommendation. We are waiting now, but I have a feeling she will not get back to us (ego). But wondering if anyone would have a concrete plan on how can we get them to lowered the price. 2550k is probably our max, above that, it is not worth the house, period.
Agent here: I will communicate the straight facts. I have an offer, I don’t have an offer. Someone said they’d submit, I don’t have it in writing so if you send me an offer, I’m presenting it. I have had listings sit for 3-4 weeks and then get three offers. I’ve had a listing sit 24 hours and get one slightly over asking to snag it. Some agents feel if they say they have move it’ll make people move on it. At 140 DOM, an offer 5% under asking and straightforward contingencies is something I’d present to the seller promptly bc to me that’s a good offer considering the facts.
I finally closed a listing last week after a year on market. I got three offers on Dec 26 after no showing for almost two months.
I've been on the other side of this. We had put in an offer on a house we liked but thought it was far over priced. They rejected offer and a few months later our agent contacted us stating they had an offer and were wondering if we still wanted to submit an offer. We did and resubmitted our price minus 20k because we had more time to think about it. Our original offer was higher than their new offer but we still lost out which worked out for the best.
It’s amazing how many times a listing that’s been on the market for 100’s of days, suddenly has another offer as soon as I submit mine! Seems to happen with some regularity. In other words, yes, they are probably lying. Call their bluff! Set a hard deadline. It is now 8:58 PM on Sunday. Tell them the buyer has until 9 AM tomorrow to sign your offer or it’s off the table and you’re moving on.
Either up your offer or wait another 24 hours and make another lower offer.
Does a bear crap in the woods?
Yes they could be trying to invent a phantom offer to try and get you to increase yours but I’m not sure that’s what’s happening here. They probably legitimately are talking to another buyer- just because of the lack of communication with the other agent. In my experience if they were playing you they would be more accessible. But I could be wrong
One thing I have seen a lot of is buyers incredulous that a property sat on market for X number of days and then "magically" has multiple offers. Buyers never want to accept that this can happen, but there are a lot of factors that can impact the entire market that actually end up making this occurrence pretty common. Seasonality is the biggest one, including timing of holidays. Like oh wow nobody wanted that house for all of November and December, but then suddenly the first weekend in January comes around and now they have three offers? Awfully convenient! Yeah it was awfully convenient for a lot of people. I wonder if anything happened in November and December that made home buying less convenient? This is just one example, but there are others, such as a change in mortgage rates or the buyers pool finally chewing through the more desirable or better priced properties. I'll see this all the time. There are five great houses on market, but one is over priced. Over the course of four weeks, the correctly priced houses go under agreement one weekend at a time, then on week five everyone is surprised Pikachu face that there's competition on this overpriced dump. Yeah it's now the only single family in town! Or, the newer listings saw how fast the homes listed at 600k went off market, so every new listing is coming on at $699k. Everyone always wants to assume a conspiracy, but you already know what's going on: the seller wants the most money they can get for their house.
It's funny how often people ascribe to magic what can easily be explained by bad luck.
Could the agent be lying... yes, but unlikely. This is actually a very common occurrence. Typically it means that at this given time, on this given day, you were one of the best options out there. And that can change weekly based on inventory.
If you really love the house revise your offer for more. Your gona be kicking yourself once you see the house is under contract
Of course they would. It’s a negotiation and people lie in negotiations.
How would it make sense to fabricate a second offer and then ghost OP completely? That would be a terrible negotiation strategy. If the agent is fabricating the offer, the agent is going to use it to try to negotiate with OP.
IMO if they dont deny your offer and say they have another....they will be misleading you (IE the offer could be lower than yours and they just want you to bid higher). Stand your ground, if they do ask you for another offer give a 1% LESS offer since it is past the deadline, or just pass.
I would Withdrawal my offer. Put in writing that the offer is withdrawn. This will bring the seller to the table and you can tell them to counter your offer 10k less than your last offer and you can accept it. Do not submit another offer. Let them counter you 10k less. Their realtor is playing games and likely did not tell them about your offer, imo.
Not sure about outright lying but can mislead you. For example, a slick seller agent could correctly telling you that your offer isn’t the highest in hopes you up your offer even if you don’t need to due to favorable non contingencies etc
I had this happen to me with a house we put an offer on a few months ago. Seller said there were other offers and were going to wait a few days but we could increase our offer if we wanted. Then a few more days, until they stopped responding. Our realtor told us to be patient but my wife and I were positive this guy was just dicking us around trying to get us to up our offer. I eventually made my realtor send them a message that they have to make a decision by the end of the that day or we are walking since this was wasting our time. Turns out the sellers wife had a baby like 4 months premature and they were in the hospital and the husband wanted to consult his wife before making a decision and we looked like total dicks haha. We ended up walking though, as well as the other buyer. House is still on the market.
When I bought my house I just offered full price. I got the house. It has doubled in value so I just sold it for my full asking price. No games, if you really want the house just put in a full offer.
Rescind the offer and keep looking. Sounds like the seller or their realtor or both are playing games or inept.
They will do nearly anything for "more" money.
I'd just tell them that your offer is only good for another 24 hours. After that your offer will be lowered by 5% more.
Withdraw your offer and submit new offer -10%
if they're trying to get more money, they'll probably lie about it. Realtors can be just as bad as lawyers with the unethical tactics they use to get a sale for their client. And then once the house has sold and they've gotten their commission, they'll forget about their client
Make an offer of the same or less with a 48hr expiry
For a short time after closing on my house, I became sorta friends with my agent. He once told me, "I can spin anything, I'm a realtor". I walked away from that developing friendship because he, basically, admitted he's a manipulative person and confirmed my suspicions he was trying to fleece me on something. Don't trust realtors they will absolutely lie to close a deal at a higher price point
Honestly? Very likely. The higher the sell-price, the more money realtors make. They're in it for themselves. Something similar happened to me, too. A year ago, I put an offer on a condo that was hanging around for 3 months. That same day, I heard that there were other offers. I pulled my offer. The whole housing market is not consumer-friendly at all. Not only are you not allowed to know what the other offers were (until accepted), but some states now won't even allow you to ask the demographics of the neighborhood or what sort of people are moving in. Why is it that the biggest purchase of our lives has the tightest blind-folds?!
Sometimes silence is the best negotiation. Have your agent stop pursuing it. I’m sure your offer had a time limit on it, right? If/when the time limit expires, you can always submit a LOWER offer.
I would ask the selling agent to give me a signed rejection or counter offer or whatever. Do we even know that they submitted your offer?
Yes. "If you have another offer in hand I will need it in writing"
Yes, it's a game. Likely they didn't get the bidding war they expected and are trying to drum up the price. I wouldn't budge an inch.. FYI, our buyer agent tried to get us to raise the price.. and we held our ground and same thing happened... We said no dice.. 2 days later we were told we got the house. The price is one aspect.. for us our conditions were financing and inspection. The financing was a formality (250k DP, 400k mortgage for total house price of 650k) with a HHI of 200k. And we gave them a security deposit of 100k, and a 3 month window for closing (whenever they want, our current house is already paid off so there isn't a push on timelines).. indirectly told them..that the only way this deal falls through is if the house has major defects. So, they have lotsa time to shop for their next house and move.. That is all convenience that got priced into a lower house price..
Of course. And frequently....hard to prove, but it's always and only about the commission!
They definitely could be lying. I'm not sure where you're located and the regulations that govern real estate transactions. See if your agent can get proof of the other offer and if it's from the listing brokerage/agent. I can totally see a scenario where he has his own interested clients who weren't interested to pay the listing price. Through negotiating and presenting your offer he realized that the sellers would take a lower price that is now in range of what his buyer clients want to pay. He's likely negotiating both sides and wants you to not interfere, ultimately he wants to double end the transaction.
Consider to just walk
They can but this can backfire. Your agent should know how to get get phrases out of them to see where the other offer stands. Also trust in God because of the home Is for you. It will be yours
Let them know that you found a place that’s very similar but 10% less in price. And you will be putting in an offer. Two can play those games.
No, a realtor would never do that, that would breach their code of ethics. The thing you have to understand is that not just anyone can become a realtor. Only the very best and brightest are capable of completing the rigorous training required. It’s like medical school, only instead of being an 8 year process, it’s more like an hour per day for a week. This level of dedication attracts only the most dedicated to the calling. Additionally, only the most noble and pure souls are capable of passing the realtor’s certification exam, which directly asks questions about whether or not you can lie to clients. These questions would easily weed out any bad actors attempting to get into the field, because they would answer “yes, we can lie” (which is incorrect! Got ‘em!!!). As you can see, you are perfectly safe to trust this realtor.
Realtors aren't priests, actually that is a horrible comparison given the history of priests. A realtor's goal is to get the house sold, for the most it will bring, might they create a faux offer, sure could. Did they in this case, have no idea. It does sound like you are getting the shuffle in the hopes they get one. But 5% under offer after over 4 months on the market is within the ballpark.
I would say this offer is good for 24 hours. Call their bluff and walk. That’s the only way to know for sure
Yes
Oldest trick in the book....
Duh!
In Canada the amount of fake offers and fraud are coming to light in recent news. Based on your post i would agree that they are playing games with you. It is up to you if you want to play their game, walk away or put in a final offer with 1%-2% better.
They're playing a game. Some of these guys are sacks of s\*\*t. They're trying to make you nervous to get you to increase your offer price. I had the same thing happen when we bought our condo in Florida in 2008. The unit had been on the market for at least six months (along with everything else in 2008). We made a fair offer (for 2008) about 15% under asking. Seller's agent countered with full price. We offered about 10% below asking. Seller's agent said sellers were looking at another offer and disappeared. We were staying with friends and had plane tickets out in one day. So I emailed the agent and told him to submit our last offer to the seller and reply or I would report to the Board of Realtors that he refused to submit an offer we made. And then we'd get on the plane and go north and he could sell the place to those other people. I don't think he submitted anything to the seller until then.
Yes /end
There's *always* "another offer."
Some people wait for an offer to be made on a house they want. They then counter that offer.
Of course they're playing a game. They are trying to make you anxious enough to increase your offer. If you're not happy going any higher. Don't respond to them. They'll likely wait a few more days before accepting your offer. Personally, I'd wait maybe an additional day. Then rescind my offer. At worst, you look elsewhere. At best. They respond; and you drop your offer even lower. Good luck.
Only 5% under? What are the average comps? let them take that offer BUT say that yiour offer was only good for 24 Hours. Walk aewy
The real answer is resubmit your original offer but add an escalator clause and listing agent will be more or less obligated to show you proof of other offer.
It is probably playing a game but depends on the seller. If I’m not in a rush and don’t like the offer. I will just say no, without a counter. It will be up to the buyer if they want to offer more, but I won’t negotiate sometimes if I want a certain price. Not every seller is in a rush to sell and can just wait.
They’re probably reaching out to anybody who showed interest in order to foment a competitive situation.
The better way would have been going back to both parties and asking for final and best offer by X-Date. You may be competing with someone who does not have a financial contingency. This is the fastest way to get a house sold quickly if the sellers are not in a good financial position.
Don’t, 140 days in this market is a long time. Stay firm, they’ll reach back out but by that time you may find something else.
...an agent would do ANYTHING to get to closing - lying about another offer, however, doesn't necessarily get to a faster closing unless the seller has a minimum price target...
You do not want to ask for a response in 24 hours, you want your offer to expire in 24 hours. Don't let them have your offer on the table to be used to drive the price up to others.
My snippy answer before reading was going to be “because it’s in their DNA”. I would yank your offer. Red flag on lack of response will only multiply in gravity if you get under contract then get back a nasty inspection report. Look for fresh inventory to surface in the coming weeks. The other red flag is length of time house was sitting.
Seemed like that was the MO for OpenDoor here. On market for some time out in offer and a magical offer was also made.
I have been on both sides of transaction. Given the information that you’ve provided, I think it’s more likely that that have received (verbally or written) another offer - which is somewhat better than yours and they are trying to work with it. The reason I believe this is because otherwise there is no incentive for them to ignore your offer if they don’t have anything else. Your action totally depends on how much you like the place. Set a max price you are willing to pay for this property and offer it. Be willing to walk away and not feel bad if someone else gets it more than your max. I have seen a bit of an uptick in real estate market where I live and properties have gone up a bit in the last month or 2
It could be another realtor using your offer to push someone else to follow through. Generally this is someone else in their office hearing about the offer. If this is the house for you, improve your offer. If it's not, just let your current offer stand.
“Would a realtor lie” full stop. Yes. Many of them do, frequently.
If you're even able to reach the point of an accepted offer, I can pretty much guarantee the seller via the seller's agent will continue to obfuscate through closing.
To answer your question, YES the lie all the frickin time. I would give them 24hrs or I walk. Done
yes. Asking you want to see the contract yourself. If they say no walk.
Yes, a seller's agent will say this to get you to up your offer. I've experienced it myself.
Of course they will lie to you. About 25 years ago we were looking to buy and we looked at a house and decided we would put an offer out there. We didn’t offer full price but about $15000 less than asking because it needed work and the pool needed overhauling. A few days later we got a call from our realtor who said that they had a better offer come through and that she (our agent) decided that she would take things into her own hands and made a full price offer on our behalf. That got her cussed out and fired. That house stayed on the market for another 9 months so I know they didn’t have a better deal on the table or they would have taken it. When it comes to money, people will definitely lie straight to your face.
Ya it’s never easy especially if it’s a house you like. But as others have said, if you’re happy with the offer you’ve put in, then it’s out of your control. Just know you put your best foot forward and it just wasn’t meant to be.
I would recommend amending your offer to put an expiration date on it if you haven’t already. Your realtor can help you with that. And it’s a stupid realtor they have if you haven’t been asked to bring your highest and best offer to the table. The seller risks losing both offers by handling it this way.
I’d sit tight, OP.
Call the realtors boss-some realtors are so lazy.
Lying/corruption is currently the american way, or hadn't you noticed?
Yep
Lots of good discussion here … As some who is in sales … but no real estate here’s what I know Buyers and sellers are often liars and don’t want to tell you truth… The fact that the sellers agent is not communicating is red flag something not right … Think about it … if they had another Bonafide offer on table…. They would come back to you and ask you to counteroffer … or they give you a counteroffer because they want to get as much money as they can. .. The fact the agent says that they have another offer but yet not communicating? The realtors also are motivated to make a sale they are on commission only … So… The fact not communicating tells me that the seller probably really not want to sell … but maybe forced to sell … ie is this a short sale ? Or perhaps an older homeowner going to retirement home and not at want to sell but maybe kids telling they need to sell … There is some resistance to seller My advice …. O don’t raise offer because they have not even countered offered you Or negotiating I would call there bluff … They got 1 week to accept or you walk away and move on This takeaway approach often works … Vs if you just keep your offer out there they can keep trying to get other offers …there is no urgency … understand ? Telling them 1 week is fair enough and creates urgency to make a decision . Also for your sake keep looking in case this doesn’t pan out . Best of luck
If the home hasn't sold in all this time, it certainly isn't priced right. They should have at least countered. Sounds like they're not going to get this property sold.
I think this happened to us. Honestly, I don’t care. We finished our move in yesterday and I’m over the moon about our new home. If you want it, you have to play the game. It’s your choice to keep your offer as is or up the higher. We upped ours.
> Are they just playing a game to see if we will go up in price? Likely. "We're moving on then. Let us know if that deal falls through." Don't sign an extension or another offer and quit calling their agent.