We conduct a detailed list complete with comparable active and expired listings, recent sales and historical data relevant to helping us determine the market value of the home. We will go over how deposits work and their importance, and explain terms or specialty clauses so you know exactly what you are agreeing to. Then, we present the offer to the seller. 

The seller may accept your offer – congratulations! The seller may reject your offer – not common, but it can happen and we would endeavour to find out why. The seller may counter sign – changing the terms of the offer and presenting the offer back to you. Our negotiations continue until we reach agreeable terms between the seller and yourself, or until an agreement cannot be reached and it is time to walk away.

This is perhaps the most shocking part of things for many people. Commonly, negotiations are wrapped upwithin 12-24 hours. In other words, if we were to write an offer at noon, it would not be unusual to receive a response (typically a counter offer) by the evening. If we didn’t get it to an acceptance that evening, it wouldn’t be unusual to have an accepted offer by the next evening.

This is a strategy question and the answer is that it depends on too many factors for there to only be one answer. There are times when an offer at 5% off of list price is perfectly acceptable/appropriate. Similarly, there are times when an offer above list price is appropriate. When we sit down to prepare an offer, we will discuss this topic at length.

As many as you’d like! However, our experience has proven that once we get past 3 counter offers from either side (i.e. 5 - 6 total counter offers), our chances of reaching mutually acceptable terms start to diminish. Remember, the goal of a negotiation is to find mutually acceptable terms. Our goal is to find the bottom end of their acceptable price range and we will never do so if they feel like we are trying to take advantage of them.