So you found "the one". After getting pre-approved with a trusted lender, doomscrolling Zillow every evening (even though your amazing real estate agent tells you to use a more accurate site 🙃… it’s ok, we won’t tell 🤫), and touring multiple homes, you finally found It. The Dream Home.
It’s perfect for your family, so you strategize with your agent. You come up with an amazing offer:
- You’re offering more money than you really wanted to spend.
- You’re flexible on closing date
- You even include a Love Letter, letting the seller know how much you adore their front porch, the beige cottagecore kitchen, and that backyard trellis with climbing ivy.
You know it’s a competitive sellers market but you feel good about the offer... you can just feel the keys in your hand. But the response is tumbleweed. The listing agent doesn’t even confirm receipt of the offer. You pester your agent: “Have you heard yet? Have you heard yet?”.
Your agent calls after a reasonable amount of time. And then passes on the message: “We’re sorry. We won’t be accepting your offer.” It’s devastating to hear and you wonder “what went wrong?”. While this might feel soul-destroying — especially if you’ve had offers rejected already, it’s absolutely not the end of the world. It just means your offer strategy has a bit of work to do. Here’s how you can bounce back after you’ve been rejected:
“Watching Tape”
After a game, athletes watch back footage of themselves to see how they did, and where they went wrong. So you should analyze your rejected offer, and you start by asking your real estate agent to call the listing agent for feedback (bear in mind: a good agent will have done this already!).
Be aware that the seller and their listing agent might not want to give you any feedback, but most reasonable agents will let you know if your offer was far too low, or if the terms weren’t good enough, or they just received much better offers. This is great information to learn from, so you know what to do better next time. Sometimes it’s nothing you did:
Perhaps the seller has a grandiose idea of what their home is worth and they’re not willing to compromise at all.
Can You Counter?
If you’re adamant you really want this home, your agent needs to communicate that to the listing agent. Perhaps your offer was just way too low for the seller to even counter back — but maybe you love this home so much that you’d be willing to go even higher or consider waiving inspections or an appraisal gap. Ideally you’d have wanted to have gone in with your best offer straight off the bat, but offer-writing is a learning curve.
Have your agent contact the listing agent and ask what it’ll take to win the home. They might be willing to hear you out if you come back with a better offer. However, if they say they’ve already moved forward with a different offer, you might need to…
Move On
“There’s always another house.” “It just wasn’t meant to be.” You’ll often hear these platitudes from agents to their buyers, but just because these sayings are cliche doesn’t mean they’re not meaningful. Sometimes it just truly isn’t meant to be.
We can’t tell you how many of our buyer clients have had their offer rejected, only to find a far better house just a week later and they realized it was fate the first one didn’t work out!
You might want to spend an evening feeling miserable about a rejected offer, but you need to pick yourself up the next day and bring a positive attitude. It’s the only way to move forward!
Next Time
A quality real estate agent will already be doing these things, so if yours isn’t, it might be time to form a partnership with a new realtor*. Here’s what your agent should do for every offer:
- CALL THE LISTING AGENT BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR OFFER
Find out what the seller wants, and what is important to them. Perhaps they’re not after a really high price for their home, but they do want flexibility to close on their schedule, and would love a rentback period to make their move easy. That phonecall also proves to the listing agent that you’re a serious buyer working with a professional agent, who actually cares about the sellers’ wants. - STRATEGIZE WITH YOU ABOUT APPRAISAL. Most sellers would love for you to agree to cover any appraisal gap, because then they’re assured the deal should close with no issues. But you may not have the funds to cover that gap if the home is listed at $400,000 and you’ve offered $450,000! What you can do instead is offer to partially cover the gap — for example, you could agree to cover up to $20,000 of an appraisal gap, which would seal the deal if the home could at least appraise for $430,000.
- STRATEGIZE WITH YOU ABOUT INSPECTION. Most sellers would love if you completely waived the inspection, because it makes the transaction really easy for them; if you waive inspection, you can’t ask for repairs! But be aware that waiving an inspection entirely puts you in a vulnerable place. It’s too risky for the majority of buyers. What you can do instead is waive part of the inspection repairs, up to a limit. For example, you could waive up to $10,000, which proves to the seller you aren’t going to nickel and dime them over silly little things like lightbulbs not working, but protects you in case there’s a major structural deficit in the house.
- STRATEGIZE HOW TO AVOID BUYING CONTINGENT. If you currently own a property, and you’re trying to upsize, downsize or relocate, if you’re at the mercy of your home selling to be able to buy the next, that means your offer is contingent. Unfortunately a contingent offer is less attractive than non-contingent because it throws up barriers to a transaction closing quickly and seamlessly. If you need your house to sell in order to buy your next, you could consider using a 0% interest bridge loan to release the equity in your house before you sell so you can buy non-contingent. Call the JFKLiving team on 856-669-4560 if you want to be put in touch with a vetted, local lender who can inform you about bridge loans.
*If you have a signed agent agreement with another broker, or you have a property listed with another broker, this is not intended as a solicitation of your business or property.
