11 TIPS TO GET YOUR HOME OFFER ACCEPTED IN 2021
Hello, Tyler Ford here, Tucson, Arizona, with ESP Realty. Welcome to this episode of living in Tucson, your Tucson real estate connection. In this episode, I’m going to be talking about 11 tips to get your offer accepted in 2021.
It’s a super competitive market out there. It is a sellers’ market, and buyers are having to compete with multiple offers. I’m going to go through 11 things you can do to be super competitive and have a really good shot at getting your offer accepted.
Here’s the 11 top tips to get your offer accepted in 2021. I’m going to walk you through 11 things you can do to have a competitive edge over other buyers.
TIP #1: GET PREQUALIFED FOR HOME LOAN
The first thing you can do is make sure that you’re pre-qualified for a home loan before you go out shopping and searching for homes. This’ll just make the process so much easier. Then when you submit an offer, it’s got to accompany what we call a pre-qual. It’s in the contract.
So, if you don’t do this and you submit an offer without a pre-qual in this market, chances are your offer’s not going to be accepted. So, the first thing you want to do is meet with your lender, get all set up and ready to go so you know what you’re dealing with in terms of the qualification.
TIP #2: HAVE LENDER CALL LISTING AGENT
The second tip, and this one’s super simple, a lot of people, I would say the majority of agents and lenders don’t do this, and it’s so important, because the listing agent on the other end can have a really important part in consulting with their sellers in order to talk about which offer they should accept.
So, if the lender picks up the phone and calls and reaches out to the listing agent saying, “Hey, the home buyer is solid, they’re ready to go,” and as a lender, I’m on top of it and we’re going to have a smooth transaction, that can go a long, long way, just a simple phone call in order to get your offer accepted.
TIP #3: BE QUICK
Tip number three is you got to be quick in this market.
Right now, as of this blog post, the average days on markets is 15 days from the time that a home is listed until it goes under contract.
So, when a home is listed, you got to be quick to get out there and quick to submit an offer or offers on homes when they hit the market.
TIP #4: WRITE A COMPETIVE OFFER
Tip number four, and these next tips are things that you can do to write a competitive offer, and there’s tons and tons of different things, but you want to make sure that you write a competitive offer in this market. Coming in substantially below list price, you’re not going to be competitive.
Again, it all depends. You want to consult with your agent, but it depends on how long a home’s been on the market and things like that. But for the most part, homes are selling super, super fast, so you need to need to, really, really important, make sure your offer is competitive.
There’s tons of different things that you can do, and I’m going to go some things that you can do right now in order to make your offer competitive.
TIP #5: PUT DOWN LARGE EARNEST MONEY DEPOSIT
Tip number five in terms of being competitive with an offer, and this one’s pretty simple, because when you make an offer, you’re going to put down earnest money, and that earnest money goes towards your closing costs, it goes towards your down payment. So, it’s money that actually goes towards something. So, why not put your best foot forward and put down a large earnest money deposit that’s going to be more than other buyers out there that will make your offer stand out?
This is a super simple strategy, but a lot of agents miss this. They come in with a small earnest money amount. So, put down a larger earnest money, which will make your offer stand out.
TIP #6: ESCALATION AND APPRAISAL CLAUSE
Tip number six is there’s some various things that you can do within the purchase contract that are going to make your offer stand out, one of which is an escalation clause that says that you’re willing to go above and beyond your offer in order to compete with other offers out there. If it’s a multiple offer situation, that’ll definitely put you up there with the competition.
Then the other thing that you can do is waive the appraisal contingency clause.
In the purchase contract, there’s an appraisal contingency clause that basically says if the property doesn’t appraise, you can do one of three things, typically. You can cancel the contract, you can renegotiate price and have the seller come down to the new appraised value, or you can meet somewhere in the middle or come in with the difference. So, there’s a couple of different things, but it doesn’t give the seller peace of mind, especially in this market. A lot of other buyers out there are saying that they would waive the appraisal contingency clause. If it doesn’t appraise, you’ve got to be able to come in with the difference between the purchase amount and the appraised value.
In the home purchase contract, you can put some protection not to exceed a certain amount, but, again, this gives the seller peace of mind that you’re not going to renegotiate price, and the sales price is what it is.
TIP #7: MAKE EARNEST MONEY HARD AFTER INSPECTIONS
Tip number seven. This is my favorite, but there is some risk. You want to consult with your agent, but if you’re absolutely certain on things, once you get through the inspection period, you can make the earnest money go hard, meaning that once you’re through the inspection, what we call the BINSR, or the buyer inspection notice, the earnest money goes hard, meaning it’s non-refundable. This gives seller the peace of mind as well, because in this market, if they take it off the market, there were quite a few probably other buyers out there or offers that they passed up on. If you walk away from the deal, it’s protection to the seller that says you’re basically paying them for their time.
Then the other thing you can do is actually release that earnest money prior to closing. You can say, once we go hard, the seller can actually have that earnest money. There is some risk involved. If you’re getting a loan and it’s not a cash deal, you want to make absolutely certain that your financing is solid and there’s not going to be any issues with the mortgage.
make sure everything’s solid, because the last thing we want to do as buyer’s agents is have you lose your earnest money if you don’t close on the deal, and financing could cause that to happen, so you just want to make sure that everything’s good to go in doing this particular strategy.
TIP #8: PAY SELLR'S CLOSING COSTS
Tip number eight is this one I like because a lot of people don’t do this. You can pay the seller’s closing costs. When you sell a home, there are certain closing costs, their title and escrow fees.
It all depends on the sales price. The higher the sales price, the higher the closing cost fees, but you can pay the seller’s closing costs and consult with your agent, find out what those closing costs would be, and if it’s more than what you can pay, you could still offer to pay a couple thousand dollars, $3,000, $1,500 towards the seller’s closing costs.
Again, this is just another strategy to help you put yourself ahead of the competition.
TIP #9: SHORTEN INSPECTION PERIOD
Tip number nine is the length of the inspection. In the purchase contract, there’s a standard 10 days in there. Some people put more, some people put less. But what you could do is shorten that inspection period, which then that does a couple of different things in the seller’s eyes.
It’s just a shorter, tighter inspection period, just gives them peace of mind knowing that if you don’t want the property, you’re going to cancel sooner than later. It’s not going to be tied up for a long period of time, and they could put the house right back on the market.
So, tighter inspection periods put the seller at ease. In this market though, it’s a little bit more difficult this because it’s harder to get inspectors and things like that.
So, last thing you want to do is put yourself at risk if you’re not able to get through that inspection period. But one thing to consider and consult with your agent just to see if the timelines work based on what you want to do.
TIP #10: SELLER LEASE BACK
Tip number 10 is do a seller lease back. Right now, sellers are having a really hard time, because although they want to sell, if they sell, because of the lack of inventory, they’re having a hard time finding a place to go.
If that’s the case for this particular seller that you’re dealing with in terms of the property you like, you could always do what, and I’ve done this now a couple of times here recently, is do a seller leaseback. So, you close on the property, let the seller stay in the home. They pay you rent and there’s a date that they’ve got to be out. That way, it gives them peace of mind, they get money in hand, and then they go find the property that they like, and they’re not stressed out and scrambling to go find something and get themselves into a jam because they’re buying or finding something that they really don’t like. So, this buys the seller a little bit of time and gives them peace of mind.
Again, it’s all about giving you a competitive edge to try to get your offer accepted over other offers.
TIP #11: PROVIDE HOME WARRANTY TO THE SELLER
Tip number 11, this one I really like because a lot of people aren’t doing, and that is in the contract, You can get a home warranty, you can have the seller pay for it, you can have the buyer pay for it.
You can get a home warranty, and then what I would do is provide what we call seller’s coverage. It’s really inexpensive to do, and you can put a home warranty in place from the time the offer is accepted until the time that it closed, that if something were to go wrong within the house, the seller’s actually covered. So, let’s say an appliance went out or there was problems with the heating and cooling, you can provide the seller coverage and a home warranty, which is a really, really good strategy that a lot of people aren’t doing.
CLOSING - FREE MOVING TRUCK
Again, everything we’re talking about here is just giving yourself a competitive edge. That’s tip number 11. These are my top 11 tips to be competitive in the current market that we’re in.
If you’re a buyer out there, I hope this helped. If you have any questions, we would love to help. Reach out to us. Again, if you’re a buyer out there in this market and need some help, we would love to help you.
One thing to consider if you’re a buyer is that we have a 16 foot box moving truck, no different than you would get at U-Haul. So, if you use us to buy or sell a home, you can use our truck for free.
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