Aug 10
16
by Julie Broad
Ok … so I started writing this post Saturday morning but our nieces arrived for their overnight visit and I had to shut it down! We proceeded to have a great day at the beach, eating fish and having a ton of fun!!
Anyway - all I wanted to do was share a quick story with an important lesson in it for you. I will skip a ton of details because we’ve seen so many houses and made so many offers lately that it would take me forever to update you on everything.
But first, I should tell you that we closed on another home for our rent to own program on Thursday last week. YEAH!!!
I will talk more about that home another day, but this story pertains to a home that is in the same area as the one we bought and did the little reno on in May of this year. It’s priced a little high at $319,000 but we figured we could negotiate it down to the price that works for us. We put in an offer on Friday morning and then went off to family reunion in Victoria.
Just before dinner while we’re all sitting around Beacon Hill Park watching the little ones chase the ducks around the realtor calls and says “they countered at $315,000 and wanted to know if you’re flexible on your closing dates because they might make an offer on a house tonight and they don’t know how that will work out.”
We had offered $297,000 and didn’t have a whole lot of room to move to make the deal work for us so you can see we’re quite a distance apart still. I told our realtor that we can move up to about $302,000 but that is pretty much our best price. That said, I told him that we’re completely flexible on dates. Have them let us know what will work and we can probably make that work for us.
He hung up and said we’d probably hear more tomorrow.
Two hours later, when we’re just about to say good bye to my family for the evening, he calls back and says “The other realtor called me and said that he wanted us to know that someone else just looked at the home and they are really excited. They are going to put in an offer this evening and it sounds like it will be strong.”
Years ago this would have got my competitive juices flowing. And if I wanted this home to live in I probably would have said “FINE – pay $315,000″ just to make sure I “won” the deal. I would have felt the emotion creep in.
But, we’ve been doing this for so long now that I just smiled and said ” Ok Steve – wish them the best. We don’t get involved in multiple bidding situations.”
Steve, our realtor, expected this answer and said that he was just relaying the message. I thanked him and hung up.
We said good bye to our family and headed to Salt Spring Island so we could get a good night’s sleep before our nieces arrived for a visit.
9:30am the next morning Steve calls and says he had an early message from the other realtor saying they would come down to $313,000.
I laughed “So the other offer didn’t work out then hey?”
I confirmed what I had already said and that is that my best price is $302,000.
That’s where this story pauses as I don’t know how it will all play out just yet. The market is not moving right now but I think the main reason is that sellers haven’t adjusted their expectations to match the slower market. When that happens several of the offers we’ve made in the last few weeks have a very good chance of coming back our way – including this one.
But here is my point – sometimes it’s easy to believe you’re in control of your emotions but trust me – once you start making offers and get into the thick of a deal it can be hard to keep your cool and remember the numbers that work for you. If we had let our emotions get the best of us, we would have been over paying for this house by about $10,000. That might not seem like much – and it’s not if we were going to live there – but as a real estate investor $10,000 will change my risk and return profile completely. That’s why it is so important to always have a maximum price you are willing to pay BEFORE starting your offers. And, always keep in mind that most Sellers need to sell more than you need to buy!
Not to mention – I think this deal is not done just yet …
Have a fabulous week everyone!
Congrats on the recent closing!
