Achievement Unlocked: Survived Your Wedding!
Buying A Home
MegEn1
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Their Realtor Was High on Painkillers - Can't Make This Stuff Up
We're first-time buyers in the depths of the process currently. It hasn't been going too badly. Our realtor, while a bit of a nag, is constantly on top of everything. Sometimes he stresses me out with text messages about needing to sign this NOW, but honestly we're happy.
One thing that seemed kind of weird though was that when we made our first offer, their realtor came back and said "No, you have to offer AT LEAST this or the seller won't even consider it." We were all kind of confused, since that is the point of negotiations, is it not? What's more, the house had been on the market for over six months so the seller wasn't in the world's best position.
We shrugged, upped our offer a little, but not to their realtor's point. They came back with a counter, and their realtor again started squacking again about how we HAVE to accept this or else the seller walks away entirely. We called her bluff, pushed a little harder and got what we wanted.
We just finished the inspection process and the same thing happened. The house is pretty turnkey but old, and there were some issues including 2-3 potentially dangerous ones that we wanted the sellers to take care of. We assumed we could just start the process by asking for money off the price of the house, figured that would be easiest. We asked for more than we were prepared to settle for, but we figured that's the way negotiating works. Here's where it gets interesting.
Their realtor calls ours minutes after the offer gets to her. We HAVE to give the seller a chance to fix everything himself (as a licensed plumber, though no issues were plumbing related) or else he'll walk, she says. At this point, my FI was unavailable so I was handling the situation via my realtor on my own. I asked why she was freaking out, if they have such a big problem why don't they counter offer? My realtor informed me that their realtor was just out of surgery and pretty high on painkillers. At that point I ask if it's even legal for her to be high, negotiate on her own, and withhold our offer from the sellers.
Twenty minutes later they had a new realtor from the same woman's agency and our offer was moved forward. The sellers came back with a counter to get most of the major problems fixed, which we're going to happily accept.
My question is this - were we doing this whole process wrong, or was their realtor totally out of line? We were under the impression we'd make an offer, they'd counter, it might go back and forth but when someone won't budge any further they say it's their final offer. Instead, we only really realized in hindsight, their realtor was holding our offers and trying to talk us into what she thought was more appropriate. Is that legal or was she just a sneaky realtor mastermind???
Just curious at this point. It seems the house is going forward, everyone has signed off and agreed on everything and we're very happy.
One thing that seemed kind of weird though was that when we made our first offer, their realtor came back and said "No, you have to offer AT LEAST this or the seller won't even consider it." We were all kind of confused, since that is the point of negotiations, is it not? What's more, the house had been on the market for over six months so the seller wasn't in the world's best position.
We shrugged, upped our offer a little, but not to their realtor's point. They came back with a counter, and their realtor again started squacking again about how we HAVE to accept this or else the seller walks away entirely. We called her bluff, pushed a little harder and got what we wanted.
We just finished the inspection process and the same thing happened. The house is pretty turnkey but old, and there were some issues including 2-3 potentially dangerous ones that we wanted the sellers to take care of. We assumed we could just start the process by asking for money off the price of the house, figured that would be easiest. We asked for more than we were prepared to settle for, but we figured that's the way negotiating works. Here's where it gets interesting.
Their realtor calls ours minutes after the offer gets to her. We HAVE to give the seller a chance to fix everything himself (as a licensed plumber, though no issues were plumbing related) or else he'll walk, she says. At this point, my FI was unavailable so I was handling the situation via my realtor on my own. I asked why she was freaking out, if they have such a big problem why don't they counter offer? My realtor informed me that their realtor was just out of surgery and pretty high on painkillers. At that point I ask if it's even legal for her to be high, negotiate on her own, and withhold our offer from the sellers.
Twenty minutes later they had a new realtor from the same woman's agency and our offer was moved forward. The sellers came back with a counter to get most of the major problems fixed, which we're going to happily accept.
My question is this - were we doing this whole process wrong, or was their realtor totally out of line? We were under the impression we'd make an offer, they'd counter, it might go back and forth but when someone won't budge any further they say it's their final offer. Instead, we only really realized in hindsight, their realtor was holding our offers and trying to talk us into what she thought was more appropriate. Is that legal or was she just a sneaky realtor mastermind???
Just curious at this point. It seems the house is going forward, everyone has signed off and agreed on everything and we're very happy.
Re: Their Realtor Was High on Painkillers - Can't Make This Stuff Up
DIY & Home Decor Blog
What is considered a "low-ball" offer will depend on your area.
This may vary by state, however, from what I was told here in Virginia, the realtor is required to present all offers to the seller regardless. However, if the seller has already told the agent that they won't accept offers below $xxx, then the realtor can relay that to you.
We also had some whacky sellers on the house we bought. They've been "trying" to sell the house since 2008, but they had enough money where they could buy their next house and rent this house. So basically they had a number they wanted, and the realtor was told nothing below that number or rent it, whichever came first. Seems a lot of people are like that, they put it on the market, but they don't have to sell it.
As for being "serious". You may have been seriously interested in buying the house, but not at the price they wanted to sell at. Our sellers actually sent an email to their agent at one point that was eventually forwarded to us that basically said that maybe we didn't belong in their neighborhood.
All that said, I think you had a whacky agent on the other end.
So yes, what she did was illegal.