Making An Offer To Purchase Property

Your hard work searching to find your dream home has paid off. There it sits, just waiting for you to make an offer to buy. Before you submit that bid to the seller, make sure you have everything that you need in place.

First, if you haven’t already, find an experienced Realtor® to help you with that offer. It’s not wise to try and create a successful bid alone. Your real estate agent can help you take the appropriate steps and avoid some of the common problems that can occur during the home buying process.

Your real estate agent will help you create the offer, which he will then present to the home’s seller, or that that seller’s agent. Sometimes multiple offers come in on a property. A Realtor® can help make your offer stand out, making it more attractive to the seller.

Even before you make that offer, make sure the financial part of the home buying process is taken care of. This means being pre-qualified and pre-approved for a mortgage and then formally applying for that mortgage. Your lender will need all the appropriate documents and advise you of how much money you are qualified to borrow.

Your Realtor® will explain the different types of offers. The preferred is the “firm offer to purchase,” which has no conditions attached. A condition is something that must be fulfilled before the sale of the home goes through. This could be anything from the buyer having to sell an existing property before buying the new one, to various repairs and agreements between the parties. Putting conditions on the offer sheet gives you the opportunity to withdraw from the sale under certain circumstances. It is not usually considered as favorable as an offer free of conditions.

A home seller, or that seller’s agent, may or may not accept your offer. They may wait to see if other offers come in, or they may be comparing it to existing offers. The best case scenario is to have the buyer accept your offer right away. But your seller may just reject it outright, or come back with a counter offer for your and your agent to consider. You have the option of accepting that offer, or sending back a counter offer of your own. It’s not unusual for negotiations to go back and forth several times until you and the seller reach agreement.