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Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #09-02: How long should negotiations take?

July 22, 2017


Speaker 1: Hey welcome back, thanks so much for joining us. You’re listening to ready, set, sold. I’m your host Bryan Vogt. Just so you know I left you with how fast should negotiations take as far as selling your home. We’ve done all those things we talked about in the last segment about getting it ready to go, ready for market, getting it priced right and now you have an offer that comes in. Now it comes a timing situation.
Just so you know, every situation, I’ve not seen any house, any deal be the same. There is no sameness to it. Every situation is different, every house is different.  How frequent were the showings? Did they come at once and all of a sudden now two weeks later there are days before the next showing, which presents an offer? Did you have one showing one week and now it’s the fourth week and now you’ve got one more showing that presents an offer? There’s so many factors that you and your agent need to look at.
Anyone to try and tell you and especially me, going to tell you well what’s right and what’s wrong as far as that goes, it’s almost impossible. It’s situational. What’s going on with you as a seller? Where are your needs at? What do you need to accomplish where you’re at, building a new home, whatever those situations are there’s just so many factors. With that said the one thing I want to talk about as I mentioned before earlier, it used to be, in fact when I came into the business some 16 years ago, the standard was 24 hours as far as response time.
Let’s say buyer wrote an offer and you, the seller had 24 hours to respond. Understand that that was in today’s technology a ˜different world we live in. Many people still didn’t have cell phones, it’s hard to believe but they didn’t. They definitely, email and those type of things weren’t available on it. Also, that everything was done in paper. What I mean by that if you had a buyer look at your house let’s say at six or 6:30 that night and they wanted to put an offer on, they went back with the agent, they went back to the office.
Usually it was hand written out. Everything was hand written out which took a lot more time. All of a sudden now they have the offer. Now they had to take that offer because we had to work with originals and we had to drive it all the way to the listing office that evening. The listing agent then had to call the seller and say hey we have an offer, when can we meet.
Now it’s nine or 9:30, usually that wasn’t too convenient, sometimes it was but most times it wasn’t. That would be the next day. The next day if you were lucky, if they worked in town maybe you could meet them both at lunch but many times that was going to be the next evening to even look at the offer and make a decision. Now it’s six o’clock or seven o’clock and now at 24 hours which was given, let’s just say at nine o’clock they’re almost under the gun to make a decision. If they accepted it, great then it had to be, then life was good. Everybody’s working that direction.
If there was a counter offer, it was another 24 hours. It physically wasn’t possible to get the deals together any sooner. The trouble is that 24 hour window too often is being used now from agents in today’s market. Today’s market is digital. Everything is done practically from email. It is rare, rare that we have what we call paper anymore. It’s electronic signatures. That’s changed probably more dramatically in the last two to three years.
Now, you have a situation where and just to kind of give you an example, buyer looking, saw the house at six o’clock, goes back they go to a McDonald’s because the buyer’s agent has an iPad. They fill out the documentation, they do the email and by 6:30 that email and that offer is sitting in front of the seller. The seller immediately gets on the phone and says hey we have an offer, sends it over to them. Before they left the McDonald’s, there’s a great offer and they had a house. The seller’s had a house sold and was moving forward in 15 minutes.
I’m saying it happens every time in 15 minutes but I’m saying that’s how quickly things are moving.
The problem is when you’re dealing with 24 hours you’re using antiquated ways of being able to service your client. You may have 24 hours, that might make sense, it’s not saying it never should happen. Remember, when you’re putting a deal together, especially the buyer’s side and most sellers are going to become buyers, you want to shorten that period of time. You want to be pushing that deal. Now let’s say you find a house on a Thursday at six o’clock. Hey, ten o’clock tonight time’s up, here’s my offer. Either put up or not put up, where are you at? Seller gives a response back, are they accepted or the seller sounds a counter back, the buyer takes it, boom, done. Everybody sleeps well tonight and we have a deal together. The reason why this can be working issue especially the buyers depending on your market area, I’ll give you another example.
That buyer’s agent tells the buyer to take 24 hours on another situation, it was at six o’clock. They gave six o’clock to that evening to that seller to respond. Two more showings happened that day and guess what another offer came up. Now, all of a sudden the worm has turned. Now you as that buyer that put the first offer in and first one in does not win, it’s best and highest, in this situation, now you as a buyer are now competing against another buyer, you’re not negotiating with the seller. That’s how it can cost you more money to buy a particular house, that timing thing.
Again, if you know there’s showings and your agent knows there’s showings and they can simply findthat out by just calling, all they need to is reduce that time. If you have the showings at 11 or even do it that night but make sure you get it before that first showing happens. Make them respond. Your agent should be pushing the deal and trying to get you that house. Remember, this is email. Most people use their cell phones or their smart phones.
Many times they are not even in the same location when they’re putting these deals together. Understand that technology has changed that. If it’s 24 hours, if there’s certain reasons why that has to happen, that’s fine. Some people don’t have computers. Some people don’t have access, elderly people sometimes, not always. That doesn’t always have to be that way. Some elderly people do very, very well with email and technology but that could be a situation that could delay it some.
It probably even then is going to be 24 hours. That’s what you want to keep in mind, that’s what’s so important about getting that done. The other part about that if you’re the seller, you may not want to drag something out. The reason being is if you’re in the desirable area there’s the military buyers. A situation happened not too long ago, military buyers, again they’ve got maybe three days, two days they have to get a house. They don’t have time to wait.
In this situation, I don’t know if it was a Tuesday night or whatever, they put the offer in, they asked for a response back. They did give 24 hours. Well the seller liked the offer but thought maybe something might better be coming down the road. That’s okay, there was nothing scheduled, could happen but it didn’t. New house came onto the market, houses come on the market every day. Military buyer got a little frustrated, thought they’d be at least get a response, they gave him until six but they thought they’d get a response faster.
They saw another house, it met their needs even better than the first house, what’d they do? They put an offer in, they rescinded and you can do this, most people don’t know this but you can rescind an offer. That’s what they did. They rescinded the offer. It’s a very simple process, doesn’t happen often but they rescinded the offer to the seller, it’s a phone call and email just saying hey, we’re out. We’re moving on. It’s over. They bought the other house while leaving the seller sitting there.
You don’t want that to happen either. Again, doesn’t happen very often but it can happen. You want to tighten those up as much as possible. In the next section we’re going to be talking about what people probably fear the most, as I said before and that is the low ball offer. What are some strategies, what are some things you can do to work around that? You can get my book ready, set, sold 12 prudent steps at ready, set, sold dot org, not dot com. Get it today, get it this morning. Hey, read a section at a time. It’s a quick read. You’re listening to Bryan Vogt, I’ll see you on the other side.

I’ll see you on the other side.

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