For a while I was working with a buyer’s agent, and one day she showed me a house I thought had potential. I asked her, “What do you think is the best strategy to get the seller to come down in price?” She looked at me with a befuddled look (as if I was clearly out of my mind) and said, “I’m not sure what you mean, but if you like the house, then we should write up an offer for the asking price and hope they take it.” Needless to say, I stopped working with that agent.
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Again, not to be dense but there are only a few strategies to get people to come down in price. Probably the only reliable one that I am aware of is to try to compensate for one crappy term by improving the other terms. For example I closed one on 30th that had asked 730 and come down to 630 over the course of 4 months. We offered 530 at 50% cash and 2 weeks of escrow. The implication of the offer as written was that the buyer is super qualified, motivated, and that the seller would not have to make another payment. They countered on price only and we got it for 545.
Unless one has the capacity to offer attractive compensating terms, there is not a lot of strategy that I am aware of. Most of the strategies that I have seen (eg some of the “formulas” for offering on REO’s) are total crap and not useful. This is an observation of my experience. Have others had experiences that they would like to share?
