NY - Can sellers "accept" an offer and say that they're taking additional offers for something better?

[Hobokenkitchen]

Scott, it sounds like your inspection went reasonably well which is great.
Re the lender issue, so many deals are dying at the minute because of lenders who are unfamiliar with an area, and/ or sloppy in their appraisal and paper work.
Getting a loan is one of the HUGE issues buyers face at the moment, and believe me it is nail biting stuff for a seller waiting to see if that mortgage commitment comes in as it should.

I too find it odd that the seller's agent is being so abrasive, as I prefer everyone working together towards a common goal, BUT who you use as a mortgage company actually IS very much the sellers business.

By the time the commitment is due the house will have been off the market for a while. If they have any concerns at all about your lender, then I am unsurprised that they want to keep showing it.

Put yourself in their shoes - a lot of lenders are on rocky ground at the moment, would you want to accept a buyer with a potentially less than stellar lender?
I would explain that your family uses this lender and that they are in good shape financially, extremely efficient and very familiar with the area.

It really is important to the sellers as well as to you.

Good luck with your purchase!

[In the Pines]

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

Scott99999..is it really worth all that effort ? This is a buyer's market you know.
Maybe someone should tell the seller and the seller's agent that bit of news.

If the sellers are being difficult and yet the buyers still want the house and are putting up with all the difficulty - makes me wonder how much of a buyer's market it really is...??? There may be lots of inventory in some areas but it doesn't mean it's good inventory. We've been looking in parts of VA and the inventory there is slim and prices are not dropping. Consequently, homes are selling for close to their asking price. It's not a buyer's market everywhere - not even close. Of course, most of the places I'm thinking of were not affected by the bubble of years past or were affected only in pockets.

[Scott99999]

From our perspective, someone being "difficult" isn't necessarily worth breaking the deal of a home we plan to have for 5, 10, or 30 years. I'm sure that we all deal with difficult people all of the time, and I just don't jump through hoops to cater to someone else's issues. I generally respond to drama by being calm and letting it burn itself out.

I think where it DOES become a deal-breaker is when either:

a) Someone does something that is (or borders on) illegal
b) Someone does something unethical that makes me concerned for what ELSE they might pull later in the deal
c) Someone has an unrealistic view of their home or the market, in which case, it's easy to quickly establish everyone's "final" offer.

In negotiations, we weren't going to go five rounds. They refused to consider our initial offer, so I countered by skipping the BS and went to exactly where I knew we'd end up in the absence of competing offers. Arguably, I went in 1% beyond what I expected they'd accept, more or less as a good will gesture and to let them know we were making an effort.

Ultimately, without clear undue pressure on either party, it really came down to the pure math of doing our own appraisal. Look at comps, come up with a reasonable price per sq. foot, adjust for things we'd need to put money into, adjust slightly for downward pressure on the market, adjust for comparable value of the features, and there we were. I also created a spreadsheet of known asking vs. sale prices in our area and established both the typical percentage and the $ amount under asking.

In the end, I think we will have gotten a slightly better part of the deal, but both parties were at risk when speculating what is going to happen in six months. If home values decrease significantly, it will have been a "good deal for this moment in time," but possibly not for the future.

I **will** say that most of these homes were priced $200k higher and have been adjusting every six months, so we got more house than we could have in the past.

[palmcoasting]

Sounds to me like you're handling things very well. Good for you for keeping a level head about it and remaining unemotional. And you seem pretty happy with the deal you've made. Now, off to attorney approval and a smooth closing!