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<p>But there was no offer! It’s not an offer if it’s not written down.</p>
<p>My husband said it perfectly: The buyer was window-shopping.</p>
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<p>Any real estate professional should know that nothing is certain until the final papers are signed. Deals can ALWAYS fall through, literally right up to signing, and she knew that, or should have. </p>
<p>For the next round, I don’t care how confident she is, insist that she keep the marketing going until a contract is signed and, as CTmom says, you have earnest money in hand.</p>
<p>The only thing this guy paid for was the septic test. Otherwise he had no skin in the game. </p>
<p>I just wrote an email to my sister telling her that, unless there were any impediments I didn’t know about, I was not asking her to take out a home equity loan to tide our mother over for rent ($6,799 a month) until an unknown closing date, but telling her to do so.They are a selfish, self-absorbed, childless couple who dote on their pets (Yes I have been drinking.) I told her it was meaningless to make a “pleasant” visit now considering the dire circumstances. I told her I had done the research and she could do the same, that there are home-equity loan options with NO pre-payment penalties, which means they could pay back the loan as soon as they got their money back after the closing. </p>
<p>The estate sale is scheduled for Nov 7 Fri and 8th Sat. I told the realtor that if customers come to view the house during those days, they will just have to deal with the crowd, empty, small, or significant, who knows.No problem I expect that when my sister and her friend are here I will insist they work and empty the house with me. So the house should be emptied by the 13th or so. </p>
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I have heard that a furnished house, with the right furnishings, shows better than an empty house. And agree, if you keep this slacker realtor, SHE should pay for the staging.
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<p>Good comment jym. I quite agree with you. When my own small family sold our last house we outgrew when the children were little, I went to a lot of trouble to "mock"furnish the house for sale out of odds and ends of our own furniture and my husband’s parents stuff. Set the table with glassware and utensils, etc. My realtor told me another realtor asked her if the house had been “professionally staged”. I can’t believe now that I did all that with three small children. I prefer that my mother’s house look nicely furnished, but I believe with my sister’s and her friend’s help, it will be the ideal time to empty it, so that is the way it will be. </p>
<p>Before I email our attorney tomorrow, I will catch up on reading here. There was a lot of stuff i never thought of, like, i think it was LasMa’s remark that the contract stipulate that the seller is not responsible for closing costs, etc, so much I didn’t know. I will observe those remarks closely</p>
<p>Do you know what I’ve been doing for years? Learning Chinese with my daughters so I could help them with their intense Chinese School homework. Now I am learning about Real Estate from ground zero. And elder care. And ALs, NHs.etc. But, if you are here on this site, on this thread, you know already.</p>
<p>xxxx DW</p>
<p>There was no offer. There was hypothetical interest, never reduced to a signed, written contract complete with earnest money. If your real estate agent doesn’t understand that, she is stupid. I’d be complaining big time to her broker and asking that the property be assigned to a competent agent. </p>
<p>In NYS, an offer is the first verbal back and forth. It is not binding. When a price is agreed on- and, presumably some conditions or contingencies- then comes the contract and deposit and, once signed, that’s binding.</p>
<p>Staging a home isn’t cheap and- imo- it may not be worth it for this house, in this town, on that street, and the ROI/return on investment is low, in this case. IMO. Plus, even if you can find someone, and even with minimal rental items, that timeline, those tasks and distraction. For the agent’s low commission (possibly about 3k minus any marketing costs,) I highly doubt she will pay for staging.</p>
<p>An option is just get any retiree stuff out an make it smell nice (cinnamon.) DH painted my MIL’s walls one of those off-white colors- forget it, you don’t have a guy to do this. </p>
<p>*I can tell her the director of admissions told me only ten pieces of artwork were allowed because more would be “a fire hazard.” * Now you get it. This is clever. </p>
<p>*I complained that the house was not aggressively marketed in October. She said that the first question potential buyers ask is, Is there an offer on the house? * Yes and No. If there are offer talks and a contract isn’t presented in X days, a motivated competitor would have come in and made his own offer. (Don’t forget the confusion about whether the the oil tank should be resolved and what would need to be disclosed to new interested parties. I remember those conversations here.).</p>
<p>What does make more sense to me is that buyers can and will look at price ranges and yes, usually one caps at 249,999. Nonetheless, it’s the agents of prospective buyers who should have guided them to your property, knowing they could underbid a bit. The seller’s agent advertises (and can bring in her own buyers if she has them.) Otherwise don’t forget the role of the other agents in this.</p>
<p>When we said, “that’s the agent’s job,” we meant certain things you were taking on. At the time.</p>
<p>There will be an open house on Wednesday. Not a usual open house day and it counts on lookers being looking that day.</p>
<p>Good for the spark you are now showing. Just be cautious that any jumps are the right moves,not headlong. As much as possible, keep communications with the agent simple and direct. And with us, because we need to be able to follow. Use us to run ideas by, if you wish. I mean before you jump.</p>
<p>You have learned a lot, yes. </p>
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I don’t know about NY, but around here, open houses held on Wednesdays are typically what they call ‘realtor’s open houses’. They’re mainly a day that realtors go out and look at houses so they know what’s on the market, etc. They also give feedback to the realtor holding the open house. Yes, you can get some potential buyers, but it’s mainly for the realtors. </p>
<p>^ Ok, maybe it’s a good step.</p>
<p>Dharma, too much on your plate. An awful day. Hope you have a good night’s sleep, and didn’t Scarlett O’Hara say, “Tomorrow is another day!”</p>
<p>teriwtt, that’s what I was referred to when I suggested a realtor’s tour. I hope that’s what it is, because that can really bump interest.</p>
<p>Absolutely, on the realtors’ open house. Some realtors will have buyers. Maybe a realtor will have a buyer looking for something in the new price range. It’s too bad the house won’t be cleared out, but it can’t be helped.</p>
<p>Oh yes, Wednesday is a realtors’ Open House. As someone noted, that is typical in NYState.</p>
<p>And certainly not, there is no time or money for a staging. Whatever furniture is left will go to the Salvation Army and the mattresses will go to the dump plus any clutter or just blah stuff. I have to find a hauler to take the mattresses. </p>
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There was no offer. There was hypothetical interest, never reduced to a signed, written contract complete with earnest money. If your real estate agent doesn’t understand that, she is stupid. I’d be complaining big time to her broker and asking that the property be assigned to a competent agent.
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<p>In two emails to me she said she saw this buyer as a very committed buyer. And she told me the same in person several times. On what grounds could she possibly have made this assessment? She never told me “why” she though so. And yet, yesterday, she told me that at least 30 percent of agreed-upon offers fall through. So why wasn’t she vigorously urging speed and showing the house until we had contracts? Yesterday she was as smooth as pie, and showed nothing that hinted at remorse.</p>
<p>Last night she did quickly get on the case and redid the listing and it is now on MLS and other sites. I carefully read the listing and emailed her that she typed “open” instead of “oven.” Ha.</p>
<p>As for complaining to the Office Manager, and asking for a new realtor, as you can imagine, I am reluctant to do this. For one thing, I am too exhausted to talk to a brand-new person about my mother’s urgent need to sell. The present realtor knows this, underscored very explicitly by me yesterday in our interview. Though, as I wrote, she did not express any remorse, I have a sense she will work much harder now on this house, because she must recognize her mistake. It is so very obvious.</p>
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<p>LasMa, please tell me, what does “a short escrow” mean? And by "signal to potential buyers etc., I suppose that just means TOLD VERY CLEARLY.</p>
<p>Also from LasMa:</p>
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<p>I pasted that in because I need to update my lawyer. In the email I send him, I want to tell him that when he draws up a contract, to put in the things LasMa wrote in the above quotation. </p>
<p>So I am asking, if anyone can tell me OTHER thing–important things that will protect my side–that the lawyer should put in the contract, that I should tell him in my email.</p>
<p>Also, I am confused about negotiating a price in writing with a contract. In writing, I guess, a plain old email? But why with a contract, especially considering that opening offers will be, probably, lowballs, and that fixing on a price and go back and forth a number of times over the course of a few days. I don’t get how each new offer and counter offer has to have a contract. It just makes sense to me to email price offers/counter offers, reach an agreement quickly, and get signed contracts quickly. Please explain why a contract with each written offer. Thanks.</p>
<p>IN any home purchase situation, especially if its a buyers market, which I suspect your area still is, you are going to have to negotiate. So you wont, in future offers, be able to stand so firm. You will have to hear what they are proposing and counter. You can perhaps propose contributing X dollars to closing if they suggest you pay all of it. But you dont want to lose a deal of a few thousand $. And again, you can ask your realtor to come off her commission, especially in light of the poor handling of this first buyer.</p>
<p>I think you should get a real estimate of what it will cost to repair the septic tank. In.writing. You may not be able to afford to fix it yourself right now (unless you can get sister to cough up the $) but you will have to disclose it and it may scare off buyers if there is mess with the septic and no idea what it will cost to fix it or how bad it is. </p>
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Your sister is a master at ignoring. Suspect she’ll ignore this loan requirement/edict too. You can’t force her. And she knows it.</p>
<p>Well the very first offer should be in writing (even if it’s a lowball) with a deposit check, even $1000. Then at least you know you have a serious buyer. That is what was missing the first go-around. There was nothing in writing; that “buyer” could have put in a written offer contingent on the oil, septic etc etc. and you could have gone into negotiations from there.</p>
<p>When LasMa was saying
</p>
<p>she was talking about the initial buyer! She didn’t want you to renegotiate a deal, when you had already agreed on the deal.</p>
<p>Now you will (soon, we hope) have a new buyer. With the new buyer, you will have new negotiations. In the new negotiations, you will agree to a new, different deal. That might include your paying closing costs, throwing in $5K, paying his agent’s fee… There’s nothing wrong with your paying the closing costs, $5K for upgrades, etc, provided that is part of the total deal you agree on. Your lawyer will know not to put any concessions in a contract that you haven’t agreed to; you don’t have to tell the lawyer that, and you shouldn’t.</p>
<p>Some of this is getting alarmist.<br>
In NYS, it’s common to get a simple offer- you come to some sort of agreement, then the earnest buyer backs it up with a legal contract and a deposit. If the buyer then backs off, generally the seller can keep that deposit. It makes the buyer play straight and gives some remedy to the seller.</p>
<p>Where Dharma got stuck was that this buyer never got off the pot. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter how things are done in some other state or whether, in some other state, an offer IS the legally binding contract. Frankly, I honed down my own understanding by just googling about New York State practices and expectations.</p>
<p>Some here are wisely saying, don’t cast things in concrete just yet. This is part of what I meant about not rushing headlong until- and unless- you understand. First, it confuses communications. Second, then mistakes have to be fixed. And people get annoyed by all this confusion, misunderstanding, the false steps and constant back-tracking; they can shut down.</p>
<p>*she did not express any remorse, I have a sense she will work much harder now on this house, *
She can advertise, return other agents’ calls, etc. But can we please remember it is buyers’ agents who show the house to potential buyers. </p>
<p>I’m not looking for remorse or a slap on her wrist. We readers don’t know why Judy felt he was legit. There are possible explanations. But what we need now is the right sort of action and communications. Three Bears- not too much, not too little, just right.</p>
<p>LF, in NY how long do these initial, pre-contract negotiations typically take? I can understand the agent initially saying that this is how negotiations in NY happen, with back-and-forth talking, before a contract is put on paper. But after ten days, we were getting suspicious, and the agent should have been getting suspicious too. At that point, she should have lowered the price to try to attract another buyer, and she <em>certainly</em> shouldn’t have continued to give Dharma false reassurances.</p>
<p>That, I don’t know. When there’s active talk,I suppose it can go on. In this case, I agree ten days is too long. As I said, my flags went up when the buyer claimed the septic repairs “could” cost 30k. Unsupported. </p>
<p>Remember, in this case, Dharma was worried about the oil tank, too. She only just got the clearance (and now we’re waiting for the web site to show it closed.) When we first said drop the price, Dharma was worried about what to tell prospects about the septic- and the then uncertain oil tank soil. (Even when they would come remove the tank.) We said, just make it a disclosure. IIRC, it stopped there. </p>
<p>This thread has confused many of us, at times. </p>