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.
Any luck with the first house you fell in love with?
My H and I have been looking for a house for almost a year. First he had to get a job in town. When he did, we got more serious by actually looking inside couple homes, attending open houses, etc. Then I had to get a job, as soon as I got a job offer, we got even more serious by getting a realtor, etc.
In summary, we have looked at 30+ homes inside and out. We fell in love with this one particular house that came on the market couple months ago. It's in our price range, however our realtor insists that we should at least offer 20K less to play the bargaining game.
It seems so strange that we are that close to possibly getting a house of our dreams. It has everything we want, it's relatively new and is in our price range. I can't help but wonder how many of you weren't successful with the first house you put an offer on. My close friend had a nightmare with not being able to get the house she wanted three times. She put down offer on four different homes before she finally got what she wanted.
How many of you were able to put down an offer on the first choice and get it? I just dont want to get my hopes up.
Re: Any luck with the first house you fell in love with?
We got the first house we put in an offer on, and reached an agreement with the seller within 24 hours. We offered 5% less than the seller's asking price, but were willing to pay full price if necessary. We ended up about 2% under asking.
It does surprise me that your realtor "insists" you offer a certain price. Our buyer's agent repeatedly said he wouldn't tell us what to offer -- mostly because he didn't want to be responsible for the seller not wanting to work with us if he offered too low, or another buyer getting it from under us, etc. In our case, though, we knew his asking price was accurate in what the house was worth, it was well within our price range, and we knew we'd pay full asking price if necessary. We tried to get a little bit of a deal, but we weren't going to risk losing the house or upsetting the seller by offering too low. Everyone's opinion is different, though -- our friends thought we were crazy to pay almost full price!
We just put an offer in on the house that we had our hearts set on. Because we love it and it is in the most perfect neighborhood, we were willing to pay full price. Plus they had already lowered their price since it had hit the market.
Our realtor researched and told us what he thought was fair so we offered 2k less with them paying closing costs and they accepted right away.
Your realtor should pull comps and do research and tell you what they think a fair price is and then let you decide. If you think it's a fair price, and the appraisal will come in to support it then offer what you feel is best.
I haven't read the rest of the responses - but 20K less than listing being reasonable depends on what the listing price is.
A seller should expected to get 2-5% less than listing (if they are priced right). It seems a lot of sellers didn't get this memo, but that's the guideline.
15% under listing is considered a low-ball offer.
We got the first house we offered on (6 years ago), and we ended up accepting/closing on the first offer we got on that house (this week).
Good luck. If the house is wonderful, updated, etc, and has comparable sales in that price range, I'd probably offer 5% under listing. Depends how long its been on the market, too.
We got our 1st choice; the first house we offered on.
We live in a slow market.
Thank you everyone for your stories! It's really encouraging hearing your stories.
I'll keep you posted!!!