In today’s market, it’s not always good enough to just put in an offer on a house. No need to worry though, we have some tricks up our sleeves that can make your offer even stronger and more likely to be chosen by the seller!
#1 Escalator Clauses
Adding an Escalator Clause into your offer can be super beneficial when you’re in a multiple offer situation. For example, let’s say we will pay the seller $2,000 over their best offer up to a max purchase price of whatever you feel comfortable. It’s a way to get into a property, enticing the seller, by giving them a little bit more money. To give you an idea, $2,000 is probably going to change your payment by somewhere between $3 to $5 a month. So it’s very minimal, but a way we can set our offer apart in a multiple offer situation.
We have had a lot of success with this strategy!
#2 Earnest Money
Earnest money is another way to entice a seller by putting more money down or making it non-refundable. For example, we actually just did that this week. We went in strong with our earnest money showing that we were serious and committed to looking at this property and not wanting to lose it. We knew that if we did end up backing out of the agreement, we would ultimately lose the earnest money, but we were so confident in being able to purchase the home that we’d beat any other offers out there.
#3 Inspection Period
The shorter the inspection period, the better. Sometimes people will even do a pre-inspection so, in a multiple offer situation, they can say that they don’t even need an inspection. Or they will bring someone with that they trust to inspect the property during the showing if they have a strong interest in the property. Typically though, if we can shorten that timeframe to just a few days, that will make our offer stronger.
Some other offers we’ve seen come in for our sellers are ones that say they won’t do an inspection at all or if they do, the sale isn’t contingent upon the inspection. It’s primarily to make sure the property fits all of their needs. We don’t usually recommend this, but for homes that look pretty good and don’t need a lot of work, it’s definitely an option to consider!
Overall, if we can get it down to a one day inspection period and have it set up for the next day after they’re planning on looking at offers, then that’s a good place to be.
#4 Site Unseen
Putting an offer site unseen might be becoming more common in this low inventory market, but there are still ways, as a buyer, that we can protect you. For instance, if we were to put an offer on a home site unseen, we could still do the short inspection timeframe which would allow us to come through the property, view it, and even get in before there’s a multiple offer situation. You would risk losing the inspection fee if it didn’t go through, but it can make your offer stronger.
When a home is at a “coming soon” status, it means no one can actually go view the property yet, but once you put in an offer, that changes. Plus with the new technology, like the 3D Matterport tours, you basically get to virtually walk through a home! You can look up, down, left, right, go to a window and look outside to see what the yard is like or the street view – very detailed. It also gives you the layout, room sizes, and dimensions. This can help give you confidence in putting in an offer site unseen.
—
There you have it! Four awesome ways to improve your chances of getting a property! We’ve got a couple more great strategies we can talk about when we meet. If you’re interested in buying a house this year, wondering what that process looks like, or if you’re wondering how much equity you have in your property, reach out to us and we would be happy to help!
Here to guide you home,
