The 30th street sale is encouraging Dan.I am about to offer 450k on a house listed at 550k that sold for 800k a few years ago. I am going to bug the listing agent about not selling it through the spring(300DOM)and the fact that there are only 3 business cards there and they have cobwebs on them. .As you well know,it is costing these lenders a lot of money to keep these houses on the market for a year.I’ll remind him of that and that interest rates are higher and how much repair the house needs.
I know when I compare sold prices to last list price there are not usually many big reductions, but there are some. Some people consider an accepted low ball as simply proof that the house was over priced, for that point in time,in the first place. I half agree.
Obviously no one can make any given seller lower their price.A radical price concession is not conceivable on most nice turnkeys. It works better for fixers and houses with lots of market time. Your strategy worked because the seller was willing and you and your buyer had the nerve and will to write the offer.
A strategy that has worked for me and I believe in, is to offer multiple low balls,sometimes using only a one page letter of intent and go back a month or two later and ask what the seller(s) thinks of the offer.I get lots of rejection of course. This has worked for me on a short sale and kept me from buying until I got a really good deal on another occasion. The later case was not necessarily a great price reduction but a great deal,attained because I patiently wrote aggressive offers until one came up and I snatched it greedily.The property was reduced while I was writing low offers elsewhere so I only asked for another 7% off and got it.
XBoxBoy, maybe your former agent knew that it would be near impossible to get a price reduction on the particular houses she was showing and maybe she just wasn’t trying as you say?Anyway It seems like she should have tried to establish mutual trust, including showing a willingness to write some agressive offers and apparently she didn’t?Maybe she did not have a very high confidence level that you would eventually buy with her, under any circumstances? Probably just didn’t fit her plan though.
