Move In or Move On

This post is inspired by what I call: The Slam Dunk Buyer. These fascinating phenoms are the determined and decisive buyers who see a property they like, write an offer and move forward with the purchase of their dream home. This is All in their first time out looking.

The large majority of buyers, in my experience, will exhaust themselves in the pursuit of the perfect house.  Looking at hundreds of homes in person and online and carefully calculating budgets, statistics, square footage and anything else you can crunch.  Not to say that they haven’t considered what’s important i.e. price, location and otherwise, they just now what they want and come prepared. As a slightly indecisive individual, I am so fascinated by the Slam Dunk Buyers.

So the question is how far are you willing to go to get what you want? If you’re not in the business and you never bought a home you might be surprised to realize how exhaustive the process can be.  An offer consists of far more than just an offer price. There are all types of negotiable terms like settlement dates, good faith deposits and the inclusion or exclusion of personal property. Then there are contingencies on mortgages, inspections, appraisals and home sale contingencies. I am probably missing a few but after this week, I could probably write a few chapters on the home sale contingencies alone. In a nutshell there are basically 3 different types of home sale contingencies and they are as follows:

1.       Sale and Settlement contingency: This means you have to sell your current home before you can settle on the next. Here, you are basically asking the sellers to kindly take their home off the market while you try and sell yours. Rarely is this acceptable in today’s market.

2.       Sale and Settlement Contingency with the Right to Continue Marketing: much as it sounds, you can get the home under agreement but basically someone else can come along and “steal” the property from under you while you are still trying to sell your current home. Sometimes it works out but it can be risky.

3.       Settlement Contingency: the most commonly accepted of the bunch. Your home is sold and you’re ready to buy. Your offer is contingent on just the settlement of your property. What happens when the seller doesn’t accept this?

Unless you can remove this contingency, your options are offer more, beg, write them a letter (send them an email after doing a comprehensive search online for their email address)?  Okay OK I don't necessarily recommend that last one but the question you need to ask yourself is if it is worth pursuing, figure out how much you are willing to pay and even then the sellers may still say no.  Inspired by my clients this week, I learned that you either can try to move in or move on. If your best offer was not accepted and you did absolutely everything you could, then... as the saying goes…it just wasn’t meant to be.