A few weeks ago I posted that we had accepted an offer on our house and were to close on March 31st. After a roller coaster year of trying to sell our house, we finally thought we were almost on the road to fulltiming. Last Monday it all fell apart. In our 4 counter offers, the buyers verbally agreed to accept an inspection from a previous offer which was contingent on selling their home, but the new buyer reserved the right to have their own inspection within 10 days. On the 10th day, they wrote an amendment to their offer asking us to repair numerous items from the first inspection. Most of these were very minor, but they insisted on licensed contractors for everything. Our realtor sent over a licensed electrician to OK the electrical as that seemed to be their main concern. The next day they added more items to their list and now wanted us to pay for an electrician of their choice. At this point, we had enough and walked away from their offer. I no longer trusted these people! Turns out, they own a home assessed at 3/4 million, had bought a home for their oldest son, and now wanted to steal our home for their youngest son. Not happening. So, we have had 4 showings in the last three days. Hopefully, the right buyer will come along soon. I realize it is a buyer's market, but our home is already priced below a recent appraisal, and it's an awesome house. I'm having a hard time understanding the greadiness of some people. Don't even get me started on home inspectors. Whatever happened to common sense. I believe everything happens for a reason, and it was best to walk away from these unreasonable people. Keeping our fingers crossed in Wisconsin!
bjoyce said
08:11 AM Feb 20, 2010
I suspect you did the right thing by walking away. People like that will come back at you after closing.
rjenkins said
08:18 AM Feb 20, 2010
It wasn't meant to be and it's good that you did not let them take advantage of you. You are right, some people love to take advantage of a situation, it's the world we live in and I think one of many reasons why people go FT RV'ing, to get away from the realities of greed and rat race.....good luck
phyllen said
09:43 AM Feb 20, 2010
I understand what you are saying. When our home was on the market, one buyer wanted us to buy new washer and dryer because what we had were not a matched set. Hey, they were in a separate laundry room and were just being thrown in at no charge. Also, Len had built a 20x40 shop on the property just three years ago. They wanted it torn down BEFORE they made a final offer. WHAT????? Our realtor agreed we would crazy to do that. For lots of people (men) it is a plus. Turned out fine as our daugther and son-in-law are buying the property and he is in this glory in that shop.
So - when people start making unreasonable demands, they are unreasonable people. You sure made the right decision.
Racerguy said
10:44 AM Feb 20, 2010
I can understand your frustration. Our property has been on the market since September without even an offer.One guy has looked at it 3 times each time bringing someone else with him. All he says is that he is "intrigued" with it. I think the combination of a really slow market in our area, a poor choice in Realtor, and our mind set of not selling at fire sale price is hurting us. We would be happy with any offer now even if it was unreasonable. I was patting myself on the back for getting out of the stock market before it went south but now am kicking myself for not pulling the trigger on selling our property 4 years ago when we had a chance. I wish you good luck on finding a reasonable buyer and will keep plugging away on ours.
K & E said
10:52 AM Feb 20, 2010
Racerguy wrote:
I can understand your frustration. Our property has been on the market since September without even an offer.One guy has looked at it 3 times each time bringing someone else with him. All he says is that he is "intrigued" with it. I think the combination of a really slow market in our area, a poor choice in Realtor, and our mind set of not selling at fire sale price is hurting us. We would be happy with any offer now even if it was unreasonable. I was patting myself on the back for getting out of the stock market before it went south but now am kicking myself for not pulling the trigger on selling our property 4 years ago when we had a chance. I wish you good luck on finding a reasonable buyer and will keep plugging away on ours.
Racerguy: Last summer we had our house listed with a flat fee broker. We had only 6 showings in 6 months. In early December, we listed with a full service broker. We interviewed about 5 brokers before choosing this agency. We have had 20 showings in 8 weeks. The right broker makes a huge difference. We chose the largest company in our area and the agency that had the most sales within that company. They are doing everything they can to sell our house. They also were honest about how much they thought the market would support as a sales price. It was less than we had hoped, but at least there is action. I know they will get it sold. Waiting is the hard part. You may want to reconsider your agent sooner than later. We too wish we had sold 4 or 5 years ago, but we weren't quite ready yet. Such is life.
azrving said
11:57 AM Feb 20, 2010
K & E wrote:
A few weeks ago I posted that we had accepted an offer on our house and were to close on March 31st. After a roller coaster year of trying to sell our house, we finally thought we were almost on the road to fulltiming. Last Monday it all fell apart. In our 4 counter offers, the buyers verbally agreed to accept an inspection from a previous offer which was contingent on selling their home, but the new buyer reserved the right to have their own inspection within 10 days. On the 10th day, they wrote an amendment to their offer asking us to repair numerous items from the first inspection. Most of these were very minor, but they insisted on licensed contractors for everything. Our realtor sent over a licensed electrician to OK the electrical as that seemed to be their main concern. The next day they added more items to their list and now wanted us to pay for an electrician of their choice. At this point, we had enough and walked away from their offer. I no longer trusted these people! Turns out, they own a home assessed at 3/4 million, had bought a home for their oldest son, and now wanted to steal our home for their youngest son. Not happening. So, we have had 4 showings in the last three days. Hopefully, the right buyer will come along soon. I realize it is a buyer's market, but our home is already priced below a recent appraisal, and it's an awesome house. I'm having a hard time understanding the greadiness of some people. Don't even get me started on home inspectors. Whatever happened to common sense. I believe everything happens for a reason, and it was best to walk away from these unreasonable people. Keeping our fingers crossed in Wisconsin!
I feel your pain!
I took 14 months to sell our house in SC. We listed our home in 2005 and went with the realtor's recommended listing price. 3 realtors later we finally sold the house. The house was inspected 5-10 times and always got a clean bill of health...their inspectors even complimented our improvements to the property and preventative maintenance & care of the property. When buyers couldn't find anything wrong with the house (to substantiate a lower offer) they would start asking that we leave personal items! We had a couple that made us a low offer and it was contingent on us leaving our boat, tractor & implements, trailer, etc with the house. Our realtor said that he had to (by law) present the offer to us even though he knew we would reject it! My wife and I were so angry that this couple had the nerve to submit a low offer and request that we leave items behind with no compensation for them, we decided to counter offer @ 30,000 above our list price (and no items will be left with the property either) to send them a message. Our house was on the market when the economy was still good and we had issues with agents and buyers. I couldn't imagine trying to sell in this down economy.
I'll be praying that all of you find a buyer for your properties so you can get out on the road ASAP!
By the way, that couple that gave us the low offer came back 6 months later and paid the full asking price with no contingencies. I guess they really wanted the house and realized we weren't going to give it away. We had a living estate auction and invited the buyers to come and bid on the items they had tried to get for free but they didn't show up on auction day!
Good Luck:)
-- Edited by azrving on Saturday 20th of February 2010 11:59:17 AM
rjenkins said
01:49 PM Feb 20, 2010
Great counter offer story azrving. Reminds me of the days when I did art shows. Prices of items were marked according to area. In one show I had already marked down one piece dramtically, it was something like 300 dollars. one couple, who I knew had no intentions of buying, was interested in the piece and asked if I could do better than that. I said ''yes, I could get 350 dollars for it". That sent the message home pretty quickly!
Racerguy said
02:22 PM Feb 20, 2010
I'll have to admit we have made some bad choices. We used biggest volume company but chose Realtor because she was a friend of a friend and sold my Grandmothers house for me in 3 weeks when I had to settle her estate.We have told her we want to sit down and discuss where we are at the end of March. Will probably ask to get out of contract as we just don't think she is aggressive enough.Second mistake was not being realistic about what our property is worth NOW. Will have to reassess all at end of March. I hope some learn from our mistakes and remember to choose wisely on the Realtor and be realistic on price.
Hdrider said
03:16 PM Feb 20, 2010
About 3 years ago we had a house and a seperate property with a RV shop on it. A couple made a # of offers and I turned them all down. One day they finally said, OK we will take your property, lets meet. So we met,, had some tea and they tried to low ball again... geezzzz. We got up,, said it was nice talking,, paid our bill and left them sitting at the table. A month later I raised the price. About a month after that they called and said they see that we still have the land for sale and the price has gone up,,,, I said yep. They then asked if I would take the price I was asking before I raised the price,,,, I said yep,,,, and they bought it what a waste of time. They since built a house on the land and it's on the market for $950K !!!
Anyway,,, good luck,,, and don't let it get ya down.
rjenkins said
03:24 PM Feb 20, 2010
Go to zillow.com and put your address there. It will not only give you a pretty accurate price of what your house is worth it will also show the price for every house in the area including those that just sold, are up for sale (through a Realtor) and are under foreclosure or bought as a foreclosure or short sale. The real price killer are homes that are in foreclosure and short sale status. Each sale of those brings the price of the remaining homes in the area down quite a bit. For example in my neighborhood all the homes are pretty much the same, very little in terms of different floor plans, sqfootage, etc. They are all within 10-20K price in value depending on the upgrades they have. But there are a couple of foreclosed homes that are listed 100K below the price in our neighborhood and they certainly don't need 100K in upgrades. Once they go, the other homes in the area goes down in price which means some will be underwater in terms of mortgage amount to equity which means more people may decide to bail and the whole vicious cycle starts all over again.
All areas of the country are not the same in terms of above but I live in Florida where we were hit pretty hard.
-- Edited by azrving on Saturday 20th of February 2010 11:59:17 AM
A month later I raised the price. About a month after that they called and said they see that we still have the land for sale and the price has gone up,,,, I said yep. They then asked if I would take the price I was asking before I raised the price,,,, I said yep,,,, and they bought it
They since built a house on the land and it's on the market for $950K !!!
Anyway,,, good luck,,, and don't let it get ya down.