Offers
Friday evening my agent got a call from Son agent that his clients were going to make an offer. They just sold a 10,000 sq ft house in Poway, they moved out of state and Nipoma was perfect as a place in San Diego for vacation home for their family. I was told to sit tight.
Friday about 7:30pm offer comes in at $940,000, all cash, 30 day escrow, $500 home warranty. No proof of funds and very sloppy, missing a lot of details. In the submittal email he explains that his clients felt it was a fair offer based on comparable sales.
I sat on it and, luckily, my agent was busy on Saturday so I spent the day crunching numbers and researching comparables. My agent picked comparables in immediate neighborhood and came up with average $990k average between fixed up nice and fixers. We felt the superior view justified asking price. My agent called all other agents with interested clients and we did not get any response.
On Sunday morning I was resigned to the fact that this was the only offer we were going to get. We prepared a detailed counter offer, with supporting comparables, at $985,000 and I knew there would probably be more back and forth. And then we get the famous phone call. I met the other buyers at the house. Meanwhile original agent starts calling for an answer and is informed that there are other buyers. One hour later we receive phone call. If I agree not to counter for highest and best, they will write an offer full price, all cash, 14 day inspection, close in 17 days. Buyer’s agent will pay for home warranty. Their agent asked detail questions on all terms needed to make a clean offer (as an agent should).
Two hours later, at 10:30 Sunday night we receive a new offer from original agent for $990,000, still sloppy and 30 days escrow. With an email explaining that his clients feel it is a fair offer because they need to put in master closet and a shower enclosure. I go to sleep knowing I made the right decision. My agent calls and lets me know that new agent is working hard on preparing all the docs and we will have written offer in our in box Monday morning.
Monday morning we have a fully executed offer, all terms clean that was sent 2am. I asked my agent to first do housekeeping and execute a formal rejection to first offer. So we sent that out first. We immediately received an email offer back from Mom agent, $10,000 over asking price with all kinds of language about how we were ‘in negotiations’ and it was not professional to accept another offer. “Please accept this offer” It was not a written offer on a contract. And, now that I think about it, it was only 6am in Hawaii where buyers lived so I’m not sure if Hawaii Pro Senior Golfer was behind the offer. Maybe they went to sleep Sunday telling their agent we will go to X to get the house. Who knows?
Moral dilemma but I stuck to my verbal promise and went ahead and did a formal acceptance. They came back with a formal written backup that was $5k over asking and still very sloppy. I had to spend time sending a counter to clean up the terms. She didn’t even get back to us about the counter until yesterday.
So, I turned down $10,000 (my D keeps pointing out its almost one semester of tuition) but in reality it would have been reduced by $500 commission, $500 home warranty and 20 more days of carrying costs which is close to $4,000. And who knows how much for repairs and credits. My buyers were extremely reasonable, inspector probably wrote up 30 issues and they only asked for 5 reasonable fixes, actually things we missed that were important like a carbon monoxide detector downstairs and GFI protected outlet at one of the kitchen locations.
