When Selling Your Home, Should You Always Choose the Highest Offer?
One of the best things a home seller can hear is that there are multiple offers on their home. However, choosing the highest bidder isn’t always the best move. There are other factors to consider before deciding to move forward with an offer, and different methods of deciding which offer to choose.
Going with the highest bidder.
When selling your home, of course you want to get the most money for it. But in some cases, buyers who make the highest bid may make demands that increase the time it takes to close a sale. For this reason, it’s always wise to find out if the potential buyer has a list of demands attached to their offer or not.
Counter Offer.
If you feel the initial offer is too low you may consider counter offering. Buyers are looking for a good deal, but you have to make sure that you are getting a fair market price for your home. Counter offering may potentially endanger the sale of your home, but will hopefully result in you getting an offer that meets your evaluation of the home. Work with your Realtor or Real Estate Agent to determine if submitting a counter offer is the right thing to do in your case.
If they pay with all cash, they’re probably your best bet.
Knowing you’ll be receiving all cash for your home can bring you a huge sigh of relief, due to the fact that loans typically take longer to close and require a higher amount of scrutiny from the lender. As appealing as an all cash offer may be, it’s important to fully understand the buyers’ contingencies before accepting an offer on your home.
The highest offer may come with some unfair strings attached.
A contingency is a condition or action that must be met in order to close the sale of a home. Sometimes a buyer may have contingencies in their offer that you may be unwilling or unable to meet. If you receive an offer but you are unwilling or unable to meeting the buyers contingencies, this is an offer you may be forced to reject.
It’s always a good idea to look into each buyer’s pre-approval status before accepting their offer. In many cases, buyers who are pre-approved are as reliable as those with a cash offer. It’s also wise to find out what the buyer’s desired move-in date is before deciding to accept an offer. Depending on your own time-frame, some buyers may want to move into the home sooner than you are willing to vacate. Move-in dates and other contingencies can be negotiated between the buyer and your realtor, it may become an issue that affects whether you accept an offer on your home or not.
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