When shopping for a home, you may come into a situation in which you are competing with multiple offers. Finding the home you want is tedious enough, but what happens when you risk losing it to another buyer? One thing you can do is to make your home offer more attractive to sellers.
How exactly do you go about making your home offer stand out in a competitive market? It may take more than just paying top dollar. Here are five ways that you can make your home offer more attractive to sellers.
- Bond with the seller. Establishing a personal connection with the seller is one way to make your home offer stand out from the crowd. You can do this by letting the seller know why it is that you are interested in his or her home via a handwritten letter, for example. Perhaps you are moving to be closer to your grandchildren, or maybe you are returning to your hometown after being away for a long period of time. Details like these can help the seller relate to your situation, which may lead them to select your offer over another.
- Schedule an inspection quickly. In a competitive situation, you don’t want the seller to be waiting on you to schedule an inspection. Try to have the home inspection done right away if possible, or at least within a few days of initiating the process of making an offer. Start researching local home inspectors in your area at the same time you submit the offer. Depending on the contract, you may only have a few days to have the inspection done anyway before moving forward.
- Request few to no repairs. Asking that a seller makes some critical repairs to his or her home before selling may be unavoidable. But if you are trying to make your home offer more attractive to sellers, then the fewer special requests, the better. A buyer can even include an “as is” inspection contingency, which promises that the buyer will not ask any repairs of the seller following an inspection. In that case, if there are issues with the house that an inspector discovers, the buyer has the option to take it as is or leave the home behind.
- Get a preapproval letter. You should not submit an offer on a house without a loan preapproval already in hand, which essentially states that you could qualify for a loan based on the information you provided to the lender. In addition, if you qualify for a conventional loan (one that is not a government loan), these can sometimes be more attractive to sellers. That’s because conventional loans often do not come with the number of provisions that FHA loans do.
- Offer more money. This may sound obvious, but it could make the difference between whether you secure your dream home or lose it to another buyer with a higher offer. You can also use an escalation clause as part of your offer, which lets the seller know that you are willing to pay more, up to “X” amount against another bid. After all, to many sellers, the most attractive offer is also the highest one.
Make your home offer more attractive to sellers by using these strategies to make sure you don’t miss out on the potential home of your dreams! For more real estate tips, continue to follow the Ryan Roberts Realtor blog! And for your real estate needs in Auburn, Opelika and Lake Martin, contact Ryan Roberts today at 334-750-9872, or email [email protected]!
