Today, I'll finish my final installment of my three part series entitled 'Top 10 Greatest Buyer Myths & Misconceptions in Real Estate'.
Here it is…
- “My Building & Pest Inspection provides me with another chance to re-negotiate the price” – This one frustrates me no end. Sure – if you negotiate a selling price on a home and discover that there are some serious hidden structural issues such as water leaks, considerable movement or termites then you are well within your right to either terminate the contract, ask to the sellers to rectify any such problems or at the very least, request some compensation from the sellers so you can pay for these things to be fixed when you move into the home. But asking for a reduction of the price based upon some obvious cosmetic flaws in the property is (in my opinion) quite unfair. I recently sold a home with a very, very rickety old timber fence at the back that was obviously falling down. The buyer viewed this fence upon their inspections and we even spoke about it. After they obtained a building & pest report, the report read.. “The rear timber fence is in an unsatisfactory condition and needs to be replaced”. It was, as they say, ‘stating the obvious’. The buyer then returned and asked for $5,000 off the purchase price to replace the fence. When I’m confronted with this situation, I politely inform the buyers that they are not purchasing a brand new home. Most owners will take these sort of things into consideration when setting the price and negotiating the deal and a cheeky buyer will usually just end up offending the sellers and receiving nothing in return. I believe that it is an agent’s job (a good agent) to do their very best to completely negate (or at least minimize) any monies off the purchase price after the building & pest inspection.
- “Sellers should accept my offer because of my reasoning” – I often have buyers who make very low offers and justify their offer with extraordinary amounts of information regarding the current market statistics in terms of current median price reductions, other comparable sales or comparisons of what’s currently on the market. Whilst these are all very pertinent details that do directly affect the current market value of any property, it is with consistent regularity that the more detail I receive from a buyer who is justifying their offer, the lower the offer usually is and quite often, the higher the probability that this information is completely inaccurate or at the very least, slightly distorted enough to alter the truth. A good agent will know where to get this sort of information and provide it in writing to the buyers so that they will either see that their information is inaccurate and they need to increase their offer. If the buyers are not open to hearing it, chances are that they won’t be the buyer of this property. I hear stories all the time of agents taking this data to their sellers and using it as a tool to persuade the owners to accept a low offer. I spoke to a buyer a few months ago who had just sold their home with another agent. This exact situation occurred and once the contract was signed, they later found out that the information they were provided (some comparable sales was completely falsified…and the agent didn’t even take the time to verify it.
- “I’ll wait for the market to drop/ I’ll wait for the sellers to drop their price!” – There’s an old Chinese Proverb that says “Man who stands on side of mountain and waits for roast duck to fly into his mouth may have very long wait.” How true! I love the buyers that tell me that they’ll wait for the market to “experience the significant correction that is inevitable” I’ll never forget when I sold a home in Arana Hills in May 2010 and I had a buyer tell me this. I ended up selling the home to a lovely young couple who owned the home for around 18 months until their circumstances had changed and they moved to Sydney and sold through me after buying the home through me initially. When it was marketed in 2012, I had a buyer inspect who I vaguely recognized. When I asked him where I knew him, he told me that he’d viewed this property when it was last for sale in May 2010. I then asked him if he was in fact, selling again himself and I was surprised when he told me that he was still looking and hadn’t yet purchased! I checked up on my old notes (which I always keep) and his feedback in 2010 was that he was waiting for the market to take a dramatic fall before he purchased. Moving on 12 months and the new owner’s circumstances changed again and the same home came up for sale with me once more. You wouldn’t believe it but the same buyer came back to inspect yet again and told me that he was still looking! Maybe he might still be around when the home is next sold in 2025 or there about?
So there it is – a complete set of ‘Greatest Myths and Misconceptions” that buyers have when purchasing.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll turn the tables and will discuss the “Greatest Myths and Misconceptions” that Sellers have when selling real estate.
Until next week, Happy Listing & Happy Selling!