Hilton Head Sellers should throw a dog a bone!
In the past few transactions, I have submitted offers that sellers chose not to counter. Now hear me out. I understand the philosophy of starting too low and educating my buyer on how to purchase property by making a reasonable first offer. The problem is that these purchasers have been pre-conditioned by the news that they should be rewarded in this current real estate market and want to make a lower initial offer in order to “stick their toe in the water”. With good available inventory, a seller should almost always offer a coutesy counter to detemine the true intentions of the buyer and not run them off to another property.
Waddya mean, your Hilton Head seller did not counter?
There are a lot of top dogs out there that are from the old school and think that they are doing their job by counseling a seller not to counter an offer. I had one agent “Blast” me with how I should have known better and how he could not believe I would throw such a terrible offer on the table. Sure my offer was low, but my purchaser wanted to test the waters and his intentions were good. In any case, the agent spent so much time getting his back up that the purchaser decided to buy another property. One that did not have all the drama.
Throw a dog a bone and see what happens!
With replacability, sellers that do not counter offers, risk losing buyers to other Hilton Head, Bluffton and Daufuskie inventory. The web and the economy have made Hilton Head properties easy to find. If a seller is fortunate to get an offer today, chances are the purchaser sees some value of the property at the asking price. One way to keep the negotiation going and to see where the buyers true intentions are is to throw a courtesy counter on the table. A courtesy counter usually is a small concession of time, money or terms with the following phrase added, “We appreciate your offer. In the spirit of showing our gratitude for your offer and to show that we are interested we have countered, however we are just too far apart right now to show our bottom price”
Don’t win the battle and lose the war in Negotiations on Hilton Head Island
Remember, negotiation is not about winning. In the Hilton Head Real Estate market, negotiation is all about finding a fair compromise. The costs are simply too high for sellers and agents to posture themselves and lose any prospective purchaser in this market. We have found success for our Hilton Head sellers by holding buyers in the negotiation and explaining our position that encourages the purchaser to move their offer to a reasonable level. Of course, every transaction is different, but our recommendation to the old dogs and sellers is to throw a dog a bone and see what happens!
April 1st, 2011 at 5:42 am
Great post! These days “any” buyer and “any” offer is better than none at all. I know sellers sometimes get offended by low offers but I just saw one seller who remained unemotional about a lowball offer and countered with his lowest and best and it was accepted. Now we are heading for a closing!
April 1st, 2011 at 9:27 am
I agree that there will be a lag between the reality of the market and the perceptions of prospective buyers as well as a reduction in “predatory buyers.” However I believe that the current aproach is working well – those that really need to sell will consider and respond to unusually low offers while others will give them the attention they deserve. I also believe it is the job of the realtors to manage the expectations on both sides with such offers. I applaud the sellers who are able to ignore unreasonably low offers potentially helping to preserve the values for all of us and also the sellers’ agents who don’t cave-in at the first opportunity for a fast sale. It has been my experience with extremely low offers in the Northeast that the middle ground is often the best you can hope for and the party presenting such an offer is likely to be trouble all the way through closing.
April 8th, 2011 at 12:12 pm
I agree, by all means do make a counter offer. But as a seller I have to add that from this side of the fence, we have already adjusted our asking price to the market conditions. I also have been met with plenty of arrogance, including offers as low as 45% (!) of the asking price. Yes, I made counter offers to every offer, no matter how insulting. And 5 times, with a lot of time wasted we had to find out that those buyers were not financially qualified.