Making an offer can be challenging. A buyer found their perfect home in the Sequim area. This was long in coming, because they had spent months searching and filtering on one of the best Sequim MLS sites, and finally identified one special home with a great water view. It needed some work to make it their ideal retirement home, but they decided to pursue this one. As my clients, they talked with me on the phone about this home over a period of a few weeks, and early in the conversations I went to the home to preview it and called them back to tell them exactly what I saw. They planned a trip and came to Sequim to see it and confirm that it was everything they wanted. They did that, and then considered how they might make an offer and how much to offer. They ultimately made the offer a week later. Just before emailing it to the listing agent, I checked the MLS status, and low and behold, it had just sold. What a disappointment for my clients.
Getting Your Offer in Before Others
Finding a home you want to buy is a large task, and making an offer is a big decision. Clearly you should do these carefully and with all due diligence. One should never get in a rush, because that’s when mistakes are often made. But the biggest variable in the entire process in the current market is the possibility of another buyer making an offer and getting it submitted before your offer. During most of the recession, this was not a great concern, but in the current market, we are seeing this happen periodically.
The Status of an Offer
I think wisdom would suggest that once you find that ideal home, do what you need to do to promptly to draft and submit your offer as soon as practical. If someone else gets an offer in before you do and their offer (or counteroffer) is accepted, there is a low probability the first offer will fail and you could come back with your offer, but in this market I would not count on that. If you miss an opportunity, it’s time to start looking again. Don’t forget that you can look up the status of a property every day at Sequim-Homes.com by looking specifically at the “status” field, which will show you if the property is “pending” or “active under contract,” which is the same as pending. If the status is “active” you can still make an offer.
Last Updated on September 23, 2019 by Chuck Marunde
