[gtmo]

Originally Posted by jax12479

Your offers seem totally reasonable in today's market -- you are unfortunately dealing with buyers who aren't ready to accept that their house isn't worth what they want it to be worth. I would drop the whole "closing costs" thing -- I have never heard of that being part of an actual real estate transaction, other than seeing it mentioned on House Hunters and other shows like that.

I should probably give up on this whole thing, but perhaps the sellers have already accepted this and built it into their listing price. Why does everybody automatically assume that buyers should be prepared to leave 10-15K on the table?

Maybe they want their house to be worth $350K. They realize that this isn't the case, so they list it for $330K, which is very much in line with recent sales in their area. They have already conceded that cannot get what they wanted. A buyer comes in and offers $320K. Why should they leave $10K on the table when their house is competitively priced?

I'm not saying that this is definately the case, because we have not been given any information on the houses that were bid on.


I am curious that there were no further communications from the sellers. If the dollar amount of the offer was the only hang-up, your agent should know this (of course they should also be able to tell you the other reason that the offers were rejected). There may be something else in the offers besides the price that the sellers didn't like.
Closing date - perhaps the offer includes a target closing date of January
Contingencies - Does the offer contain a contingency that you sell your current house first? Are you asking for some unreasonable inspections? Perhaps you are getting some poor advice from you real estate agent and you are asking to be let out the contract if you find $100 worth of repairs that need to be made, whena typical threshold is more like $2500.
Deposit - Are you offering a deposit of a few thousand dollars just in case you decide to walk away?


And etiqutte is irrelevent when negotiating a price. I would think of etiquette incuding things like letting you measure for cabinets 2 weeks before the close when the seller has no obligation to let you into the house.