Don’t Shoot Yourself in the Foot When You Make an Offer on a Sacramento Home

Buyers who make an offer on a new listing should discuss the price with a Realtor.

The trouble with making an offer on a home is many buyers judge the value of the home by the sales prices of surrounding homes and not the comparable sales. They do not seem to understand that the gray house with the remodeled kitchen and additional 500 square feet is worth many thousands more than the home they can really afford to buy, which is the brown house, two blocks over, without the remodeled kitchen and 500 square feet less.

You might read this and say to yourself: it makes sense, why doesn’t it make sense to the buyer? And it’s because they don’t look at it this way. They see 6 or 7 homes, all of which vary in size, configurations, location and condition, and in their mind those homes are all the same. They are homes for sale in Sacramento, and all they have to do is pick one and make an offer for less. I know agents are chuckling?over this scenario but it’s how buyers’ minds work. I hear it day after day from buyer’s agents who call on my listings.

I can also understand why buyer’s agents might not want to discourage them because to do so could alienate the buyer from the agent. Nobody wants to be told they don’t understand what they are doing. Agents often will urge them to make an offer, any offer, because once they get a signature on the contract, they hope the negotiations will continue.

But you can take a brand new listing in Sacramento that is attracting a lot of attention and buyers will still think it is OK to offer less. The problem is the seller is very unlikely to accept such an offer. Even if the buyer were to make an offer for FULL list price, the seller might not even take that kind of offer, and believe it or not, a seller is not required to. Nope, no law.

Often I get buyer’s agents who say their buyer wants to make an offer just prior to an open house because they are worried another buyer at the open house will want their home and swipe it. Yet, they often make an offer that the seller cannot or will not accept. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Bottom line, if the buyer wants to make an offer, it helps to determine market conditions, assess the competition for the home, and best of all, to consider the comparable sales.