Should you accept the first offer on your house?

Hello. Welcome to Todd Miller TV. I heard an agent say something and I wanted to discuss it. What the quote was, was “Never accept the first offer,” and some of you probably know there’s a saying out there that says, “All other things being equal, the first offer you get is normally the best offer.” So the title is “Should you accept the first offer on your house.”

So I wanted to sort of talk about that and sort of what my philosophy is on offers. So the real estate market is actually pretty efficient in most situations in determining price. When a property is a good deal and a buyer and seller can make an agreement, that price is usually well-known and I think there’s an expectation out there amongst sellers that there’s some person out there – and I hear this a lot. They’re from California where prices are way more and they will come here and accidentally overpay for the house so they want to list it really high and I don’t think that’s true. I think that everybody understands what value is.

If you look at three or four or five houses, and look at some sold comps, you’re going to know. Plus you have appraisals and things like that. So the market is pretty efficient. So the question you have to ask yourself is just very simple.

Did the house have enough exposure and enough people look at it that made people want to make an offer? So I will give you an example. We had a property recently. We put it in the MLS. Within a week, we had 57 offers. We didn’t under-price the property. The asset manager gave us a little bit lower but it’s a very efficient market so that everyone jumped on it because it was a little bit below list price and getting bid up about $20,000 over list price. Should you accept the first offer.

So it was pretty substantial but if you’ve had 20 people see your house and you finally get an offer and it’s for 5000 under and you counter and that’s as high as they’re willing to go, that may be the best offer that you’re going to get at that point in time. So there’s not really a hard and fast rule for should you accept an offer or not or should you never accept the first. I’ve seen it. So should you accept the first offer? I’ve seen people accept the first offer and then like two weeks later somebody calls saying, “Well, we will go over that. We’re wiling to pay less or a little more if it falls out,” and I’ve seen situations where people have rejected the first offer and it was the best and then later on, they ended up settling and selling for less.

So there’s not a hard and fast rule but as a general rule, if 20 people have seen the house and you don’t get an offer, something is wrong, should you accept the first offer.  But if you do get an offer and you’ve had a reasonable amount of exposure, then that’s probably close to market value meaning yes, people do lowball. But people are really trying to get a house and if you negotiate back and forth and that’s as high as they’re willing to go, then sometimes that says a lot. Should you accept the first offer.

So I just wanted to throw that out there but whatever you’ve heard about definitely do this or definitely do that, I don’t believe in any definitelys in real estate. There’s more of an art to it than a science for getting the most money especially since I specialize in getting the seller the most money out of the deal throughout the whole process in every part of the contract.

So it’s really important for me to explain that to clients and it’s probably something that you should know out there as well, whether you’re an agent or whether you’re thinking about selling. So anyway, so I shared that with you. That’s my update for today. I hope to see you on another video. Thanks.

Should you accept the first offer on your house Video.