Stop me, if you’ve heard this before:

“I think we should start a little high so if someone comes in with a lower offer, we can have a little wiggle room to negotiate.”

It’s like that with almost everything — cars, boats…houses.

No matter how much I might try to convince a home seller that they shouldn’t price their homes too high, they always insist that they want to price the home so they can “come down on the price, if I have to.”

OK. Fine

The Buyer Side

So, let’s say you’re a home buyer and you’ve been qualified for a mortgage up to about $400,000.  That’s a nice house in a nice neighborhood in the MD Suburbs. You get with your Realtor and you start looking around for houses. Maybe in the $380,000 to $400,000 range. You look and look. Nothing really appeals to you.

One day you happen to drive by a house in a neighborhood you like and you call up your Realtor (ok, you really just call the number on the sign but you’re supposed to call your Realtor). Your Realtor looks it up and tells you it’s $415,000.  That’s why it never came up in any of your searches. It’s a little bit out of your price range for the mortgage you qualify for.

Do you pass?

No siree. You want to see this baby.  You know. Just to see.

You arrange for the visit and you and your Realtor take a tour of the home and you really like it. But, it’s $15,000 more than you can get a mortgage for, remember?

What happens next?

Sadly, a lot of home buyers will simply rationalize something wrong with the house (the carpet is stained, the paint isn’t a good color) and walk away. “Let’s keep looking.”, they tell their Realtor.

Make The Offer

I get feedback from Realtors all the time after they have visited one of my listings.

A lot of the time there is a comment about the home being “slightly over priced” or “my client liked the home but it was a little out of his range.”

That home buyer will never know if they could have had the home of their dreams if they had just made an offer.  Sure.  The offer may have been rejected.  Or, the home seller may have come back with a counter offer. In the best of circumstances (and I see this a lot), the home seller will take the lower offer as presented. No counter offer. No nothing. Accepted.

Remember the top of this post? A lot of home sellers start a little high in the expectation of a lower offer.  Even if the pricing is at the rock bottom of what the seller can accept and still sell the house without going into a short sale situation, you’ll know that you gave it a shot.

Think about the condition of the house, whether it’s empty or occupied, how long it’s been on the market. A lot of factors go into a home seller’s decision. The biggest factor is being able to pay off the mortgage and the other costs of the sale. Many sellers are willing, even eager, to get an offer even if it’s barely enough to cover their nut.

Don’t let the price, alone, keep you from making an offer. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Check out this super easy way to search for home in the MD Suburbs – click here