Reverse Offers: When She Asks Him To The Dance
categories: Listings, Real Estate Industry, Sellers, Stuff I like to talk about
Just like everyone wants to be liked, Sellers just want some buyer love. Your home gets shown, and show, and shown, you get the idea. Everybody “likes” you but who LOVES you? We can lower the price and wait some more. That’s the traditional approach, right?
Why do we feel it necessary to do what is normal. We’re in a very different market. One that acts like nothing most of us have ever seen. What used to be “normal” isn’t any longer. It’s like when we were kids, the boys ALWAYS asked the girls to the dance, right? Why didn’t the girls ever ask the boys? Maybe some did. Those girls who refused to do what was considered normal.
That’s what a reverse offer is like. I had a unique listing that received little traffic but great feedback when we had showings. After too much time on the market I decided to do something different. We had a buyer who loved the house but wanted to keep looking. I approached the Seller’s with the idea of making an offer to the buyer.
Now, here is the important part. If you do this, it must be a meaningful offer. Meaningful enough to pull the buyer off of the fence and say “Maybe I don’t need to keep looking”. At the same time, you want to deliver the offer in a way that says “We think this is meaningful and you shouldn’t see this as an opening offer to a protracted negotiation. We’re pretty much where we think we can go”.
Well it worked. We had to give up a little more than our original reverse offer price but the important thing is we motivated the buyer to make a decision. As most Realtors out there can attest, getting buyers to pull the trigger can be difficult in this market.
If we shift our thinking with the shifted market, we will survive…or better yet, thrive!
