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We listed our home on Thursday 5/21 for $715,000. Our 4br 2.5ba 1959 home in northern NJ is in a great location and town (quiet street, walking distance to school, park like property 0.70acre lot etc.). Kitchen and bathrooms are not updated, however our town is in high demand and other homes appear to be going into attorney review pretty quickly. We've had 6 showings thus far with the first open house scheduled for this coming Sunday 5/31 (we elected not to have the open house this past weekend due to the holiday).
We were going to list next spring but with our neighbor across the street listing their home for $750k 4 weeks ago (no offers), we thought why not try and see if we can leverage off of their price and come in at $715k. Their home is in worse shape with wall paper everywhere, terrible decor, back yard's a mess etc..
Having said all that, we expect an offer to be signed and presented to us later today from a showing we had last Friday. Our agent texted us last night and told us: "Buyer's agent is having offer signed tomorrow. Hang tight and don't be disappointed if it isn't what you want". This leads me to be believe they're coming in low. We're not desperate to sell our home and have a flexible timeline for our move to Florida. It can be in 2 months or a year+ from now. We just want to squeeze as much $ out of this house as possible (don't we all...).
Not to over-analyze but there was another couple that's looked at our house twice now and we also spotted them driving up and down our street looking at our house yesterday. This couple (not the ones making the offer) is downsizing from a $1.3m home few blocks away and put their house up for sale on Saturday 5/23. I suggested to our broker that she should contact their agent to see what their intentions are and let them know that an offer is forthcoming on our place. Her response to me was: "well I already contacted them few days ago after the showing to gauge their interest but the buyer's agent never called back. We don't want to seem desperate so I'm not going to contact them again. If they have any sort of interest, they will call me." Not sure if that's a good tactic but I trust her judgement. What do you guys think?
Also, if this offer comes in at say $680k, would the buyers be offended if we countered few thousand below list at $712k or $713k? It's so early in terms of "DOM" so we feel we have a ton of leverage at this point not to mention the fact that we're not desperate sellers. Any thoughts/comments are welcome. Thanks!
We had almost the same scenario when we sold out LI home 5 years ago. Priced it a bit low at $749 (I think - hard to believe I don't remember exactly). First offer came in right around where you're thinking - cash buyer offering something like $675K.
Here's my advice - let your agent worry about offers and negotiating. If you did your homework and trust your agent, then you should trust them and their advice and not a bunch of people on the internet who aren't intimately familiar with your market and your home and what your wants and needs are.
We countered high on that offer, and they weren't willing to come up into our ballpark. Our agent (and theirs) said this was simply a matter of them not being familiar enough with the market to know they were seriously underpriced for even a "middle of the road home" (ours was newly renovated top to bottom). We didn't get insulted or worked up over it. We knew we'd get what we wanted, and we did - in fact we had a little bidding war between 3 buyers and got close to asking.
The people who looked at your home twice may just be slow movers. That may work out for them, it may not. One of the couples that dropped out of our bidding war went for a house a couple blocks over for about $30K less, and they ended up killing the deal because the house needed about $100K of structural work. Maybe they were out of the ballpark for what they could really afford, maybe they just couldn't pull the trigger on paying up front for a house in mint condition - you never know what is going on with people. Your couple has listed their home for $1.3 mil, maybe they have a huge mortgage to match and don't know if they will pay it off. You just never know.
Again, let the agent that you hired help you decide what you should do. We absolutely trusted our agent to sell the home fast and for the price we wanted and that's exactly what he did.
Your agent will know your market best but if you are getting offer immediately, I would only entertain full or almost full asking price. The $749K is obviously helping you but if the COMPS are correctly, I wouldn't bother with the initial lowball offer.
your agent should be happy to contact the double-showing agent once you actually have a written offer in hand.
I do wonder how you know so precisely who these other folks are. Do you know whether they're capable of buying your home while theirs is for sale?
your agent's comment about "don't be surprised..." could merely be based on an off-the-cuff conversation with the Buyer's agent.
It does seem like you're over-analyzing the situation - the only material thing your agent can do anything about is your observation that couple #2 has been stalking your house/neighborhood. What your neighbor is asking and how it compares to you really doesn't matter. Whether you want to move now or in a year, really doesn't matter.
I do wonder how you know so precisely who these other folks are. Do you know whether they're capable of buying your home while theirs is for sale?
My wife and I went to an open house few blocks away few weeks ago to scope out the competition (similar style house on a fairly busy street priced at $675k). The place looked like it hadn't been touched since 1960. In any event, there was another couple there at the open house who indicated to us that they were frustrated that they haven't been able to find the right home on a street they like. We told them that we were putting our house up for sale in a few days and that they were more than welcome to come take a look. They accepted our invite and drove over to our house as we walked back. They told us where they lived and that they were looking to down size since all their kids were off to college.
When our house went up for sale this past Thursday, they made an appointment for a showing on Friday morning (I was working from home that day so I sat in my car down the street while they were there). On Saturday, my wife was out walking our son in the stroller and she saw them driving up and down the street and they even drove into the driveway to look at the property (it's a small street with 10 homes so only the people that live there usually drive by).
We told our agent about it and she proceeded to tell us that that the downsizers had just listed their home that very same day for $1.3m.
I do wonder how you know so precisely who these other folks are. Do you know whether they're capable of buying your home while theirs is for sale?
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Although the OP answered this question, I have to chime in that I'm guessing his town is similar to where we moved from on LI - in our small town, everyone knows everybody's business, and if you don't you can find someone who does. It's not uncommon to find one set of friends looking at houses while the others sit back and let them do the dirty work. We had acquaintances who looked at 3 houses we were interested in 20 years ago and they paid for inspections that all turned up dire faults which we heard through the grapevine. Saved us a ton of money!
It is always a tough one. To many agents, t he last few percent on a sale just does not matter. They need the deal to close in order to get paid and thus tend to focus on that a lot more than perhaps they should.
Meanwhile according to some research when dealing with properties they own RE agents tend to list them longer than average.
Take all the agent owned properties vs the client owned properties, and agent owned homes have an average high day on market than everyone else.
that tells me agents value their own homes more highly than client owned homes and they hold out for a better price ....
it is my view that seller agents should be compensated in a way that more directly aligns with the owners interests.
One way might be to have the lising agent get 50% of their fee for closing the deal and the rest based on the last 10% of the sale price. thus making it worth their while to get you the best price they can.
it would need fine tuning to work of course.
I should add US RE agents would rather stab out their own eyes than use a system that agilned interests as the current method makes far more money through high turn over with minimal work.
We'll counter for sure but I was wondering if the buyers would lose interest and walk if we were to lower the price by only $2k.
It's a RISK. You say you don't really HAVE to move, so it should be LESS risky for you. We've done it, and it worked for us.
Nothing matters till you have the actual offer anyway. It's all about the numbers.
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