As soon as a property seller gets their first offer, their instinct is always: Hold out. Wait. Something better is surely coming along. To take that first bid off the table is to leave money on the table. And there’s a faint sense, also, of having played the game incorrectly, that your keenness has led you to jump too easily. The ‘first’ offer, by definition, suggests a kind of haste that might make the buyer look too eager – or even too available.
That instinct, however, is understandable yet, in a fairly important number of cases, completely wrong. Far from being arbitrary and unconsidered, the first offer made on a property is unlikely to be some sort of random event. The buyer has been paying attention to the market – probably to some of the comparable properties now selling around them. The arrival of their first offer means they’ve seen that your house has just appeared, have moved quickly and recognised its value. A good case can be made for why the buyer who offers first is usually the most motivated: in many cases, they’ll be the one who has been searching the longest and who sees in your house exactly what they want.
Therefore, given the above, the ‘alternative’ to waiting for that elusive better offer is to accept the first one – a choice with no real cost. But the flipside is that waiting does, in fact, come with a cost. One of the biggest mistakes sellers make is not realising that waiting in vain for a better offer might not materialise. You’re stuck in limbo. In many markets, particularly for private sales, it can cost sellers a lot if a property is on the market for ages. Other buyers in the first week of listing will know immediately if a home or apartment remains unsold after the expected time on the market, and they’ll suspect the worst – that there must be something wrong with it.
Meanwhile, the longer a sale takes, the less negotiating power a seller has: the passage of time shifts the balance of power into the hands of the few buyers who do remain interested.
Seasoned estate agents who’ve been advising first-time sellers for years are well aware of this. For Estate Agents Cheltenham, contact http://www.meandyouestateagents.co.uk/
It could be said that the best buyers tend to arrive late, but, more often than not, that’s simply not true. When there are multiple bidders, one of the serious ones will get there first. The best buyers are not always the highest bidder, but they are usually serious, financially prepared and in a position to move things forward. That’s why a chain-free buyer (someone who has already sold their own property) is a sweet find for any estate agent because this type of sale leads to a transaction with much easier completion and less opportunity for drama.
How a down-valuation can derail a sale
Accepting an offer is only the first step, and one risk that can catch sellers out is a down-valuation. This happens when the buyer’s mortgage surveyor decides the house is worth less than the agreed price. It can follow a survey that finds issues affecting the value, and because lenders take a long-term view of a property’s worth, rather than aiming for the best price achievable, their figure can come in lower.
When it happens, the buyer has limited options, and the sale can fall through. The timing makes it worse. By the time the valuation takes place, other interested buyers may have found somewhere else and moved on.
Arranging a homebuyers survey yourself can flag problems early, before they put a sale at risk. Check what each survey costs and how detailed it is, and choose the most thorough one you can afford.