Strategy Tips for Competitive Offers

Follow this advice for a winning offer

Regardless of any real estate market conditions there can be multiple offers on a property for sale at any time. In today’s market the buyer demand is still far exceeding the lack of supply for many types of properties. This begs the question of how can you make your offer more competitive? Here are some helpful tactics to employ.

Appraisal gap coverage

There may be a situation in a competitive bidding situation where you offer more money than the asking price, but that can be problematic when it comes time for the home to get appraised. What if your offer exceeds the home appraisal value? In this case you can offer appraisal gap coverage as a potential solution. Essentially you can offer to pay any overage of the appraisal value in cash if you are able.

Earnest deposit

The amount of your deposit is an indication of your level of commitment to buying the home. There may be some ways out of the deal should there be issues with the home inspection or the like, but generally the more money you put down the higher the risk you are taking with more skin in the game. From a seller’s point of view this shows that the purchase may be more solid with a better chance of it actually closing.

Home inspection limits

You can do this in a few different ways like instead of a 10 day period for inspection, shorten this to having it done in 3-5 days. Also, once you have your inspection you may want to be more accepting any of the items that are found and deal with them on your end unless they are significant enough that they extinguish your interest in buying the home. 

Pay closing costs

Buying a home involves a lot of money up front for your down payment and for your closing costs. For buyers that are short of funds on hand or especially first time buyers it can be common to ask that the seller cover a certain amount of the closing costs. It would be a good idea to avoid requesting this if entering a competitive bid situation if you can as a seller will most likely go with the deal where they don’t have to complicate anything and front funds.

Escalation clause

This can be a very strong option for a winning dollar offer. You can craft an offer stating that you will pay $X dollars more than any other offer up to a certain capped purchase price. This can give you a leg up if any of the competing offers are within your comfortable amount. 

Be open to the seller’s timing

First, if you can be flexible then alert the seller that you can close in the fastest possible timeframe or that you can work with them on their desired closing timing. Some sellers may need more time before moving to their next home like if they need to wait until it is built or ready to move in. Finally, should they need to close but stay in the home for a brief period then you could provide short term leased occupancy to them. In these cases you can collect rent or a fee for them to remain in the home as short term tenants.