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How to Win in Multiple Offers

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As a buyer, you can spend months searching for the perfect home. When you find the home you have been looking for, it can be frustrating to find out that you are going to be in competition with other buyers when you put in your offer. It is important to do your homework and be prepared for a situation like this. You do not want to miss out on the perfect property because you were not sure how to navigate the competitive market. If you haven’t started working with a Realtor to help you, please reach out and I would be happy to help! To learn what you can do to better prepare yourself, make your offer more competitive and increase your chances of winning in multiple offers, please read on.

  1. Keep a win-win attitude. I think this is good advice in any market, but especially in a seller’s market. You don’t want to come in full throttle, expecting to get everything that you want while conceding nothing to the seller. It’s important to put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself, how would you feel if you were in their position? There are certain things that may not be as important to you. Maybe the closing date or a certain fixture that the seller wants to take with them. It’s just a matter of keeping that good attitude and making sure that both you and the seller come out happy in the end.
  2. Choose a real estate agent who’s a team player. This goes hand in hand with the idea of using a win-win negotiating strategy. Make sure that your agent is personable, friendly and can work well with a seller’s agent to promote you in the best light.
  3. Make sure that you are pre-approved by your lender if you require financing. Pre-approval is a little bit different than getting pre-qualified. Pre-approval is when you send all of your financial documents to your lender, they evaluate your financial situation and your lender provides you with a pre-approval letter. Once you receive your pre-approval letter, your agent is going to be able to talk to a seller’s representative when you find a home to let them know that you are pre-approved and ready to close.
  4. Increase the size of your deposit. With all other things being equal, if you have a larger deposit than any other offer, you are going to make yourself stand out. Consider it a token of good faith. It shows the seller your confidence in your ability to close.
  5. Make sure that you do a comparative market analysis on the property before you submit your offer. That way you are very comfortable with the value of the property and how much the property is likely going to sell for. If you know that you’re going into a multiple offer situation and you know how much the house is worth and likely to sell for, you can feel confident putting in a strong initial offer. If you are serious about purchasing a property and know you will be in competition, there is really no room for low-ball offers. You are going to need to come in near or over asking price on a well-priced home.
  6. Try to submit a pre-emptive offer. If a seller is willing to entertain pre-emptive offers and you submit a very strong offer, there’s a chance that the seller will be willing to sell to you before they ever get a chance to look at another offer.
  7. Include fewer contingencies. This can have a significant impact on your competitiveness – a seller will often time choose a buyer, even if it’s for less money if there are fewer conditions in their offer. It’s very important however, as a buyer to understand the risks of omitting these important clauses that are meant to protect you.
  8. Make sure that you don’t submit your offer too early. What can happen when you submit your offer too early is the seller’s agent can use your offer to encourage new offers coming in to match or exceed the offer you’ve submitted. Make sure that your offer doesn’t come in much before the deadline to prevent your offer from being used as a jumping-off point.
  9. Leave the closing date blank on the offer that you submit to the seller. The closing date may or may not be an important factor to you, but it may be an important factor to the seller. So if you’re not set on a specific date, you can leave it blank or simply ask the seller beforehand which date they would prefer.
  10. Call the seller’s representative to promote your offer and ask probing questions. Your agent can let the seller know that you are a serious buyer, that you are pre-approved and ready to close. Your agent may be able to elicit some important information that could be beneficial to you and your offer.
  11. Write a letter to the seller about yourself. Include a photograph if you want to. Explain what it is that you love about their home and why they should sell it to you over someone else. Some sellers are sentimental and they’re not always going to choose an offer based solely on price. Sometimes the seller wants to make sure they’re selling to somebody who’s going to enjoy their home as much as they did.
  12. Make sure that your agent presents your offer personally, rather than relying on the seller’s agent to present it for you. If presenting in person isn’t possible, your agent could ask to present your offer via zoom or another online meeting platform.
  13. If your offer isn’t successful, you can ask the seller if they would be willing to sign a backup offer with you. That means that if the original offer they’ve chosen to go with falls through, your offer becomes a firm and binding contract instead of it going back on the market.

And my last piece of advice when entering into multiple offers is to make sure that you mentally prepare yourself for the possibility of not winning the first time around. If you came prepared to the bargaining table, put your best offer forward and you still weren’t successful then you need to just keep your head up, stay positive and know that you’re doing everything in your power to set yourself up for success for the next opportunity.

I hope that you found this helpful. If you have any questions or want more information please get in touch. I would love to help.

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Michelle Stevens
REALTOR®
Email: michelle@jewelhouserealestate.com
Phone: 705-970-6137
RE/MAX Hallmark Chay Realty Inc. Brokerage