Most buyers will have made an offer on the basis of at least some degree of emotional attachment to your property and although you don’t want to manipulate that, you do want to use it to your advantage so don’t be afraid to negotiate hard.
Here are my tips for dealing with offers:
Don’t be offended by really low offers. Any offer is a good offer. It means someone wants to buy your property. It’s down to your agent to negotiate correctly and achieve the highest price possible.
Don’t get hung up on achieving a “round figure” just because it sounds nice – eg If you have have an a max offer of £249,500 but you want £250,000.
You have 3 choices on every offer – accept, refuse or use. Don’t be afraid to “use” an offer to counter offer on your onward purchase.
If you receive one or more offers early on in the marketing process, be very cautious in trying to beat the market and holding out for more. Research shows that the best offers usually come in during the first four weeks of marketing a property.
From the moment an offer comes in you need to react, as delays make buyers nervous. Remember, just because they have made an offer that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped looking.
Make sure EVERY offer is correctly qualified, identifying both the potential buyers’ chain and financial position before entering into negotiations with them. One of the principle reasons sales fall through is that the correct due diligence wasn’t carried out by the estate agent at the point of negotiation.
Thanks for reading – if you have any comments or questions feel free to post below, or get in touch, I’d love to hear from you!
