Featuring real estate articles and information to help real estate buyers and sellers. The Nest features writings from Georges Benoliel and other real estate professionals. Georges is the Co-Founder of NestApple and has been working as an active real estate investor for over a decade.
When trying to buy a home, you must assemble a comprehensive package that serves as a purchase offer. It’s a hefty bit of paperwork, but in most cases, buyers don’t deliver the package to the seller. Or rather, you don’t directly give it to people. So, who brings that packet to the seller? If you have a real estate buyer’s agent, then the agent remains responsible for delivering the offer to the seller’s agent. If you don’t have a buyer’s agent, you must drop it off directly to the seller or agent. You can send offers via email or through direct hand-to-hand drop-off.
You aren’t alone in wondering what to expect from the real estate transaction.
We will explain everything to you. We will discuss acceptable methods for delivering an accepted offer.
The Responsibility for delivering an offer rests squarely on the buyer’s party. Who pays your request to the seller depends on whether you and the seller have real estate agents representing your interests. If the seller has an agent, your offer gets delivered to the seller by their agent. If the seller does not have an agent, your offer gets delivered to the seller by your agent.
However, who explicitly needs to deliver it can change. It all hinges on whether you hire a buyer agent. If you have a buyer’s agent, it’s up to them to ensure the proposal is delivered. Otherwise, you must provide your own offer.
Once again, this hinges on whether or not the seller has hired a real estate agent to help them sell the house.
If they didn’t, they received the offer directly. If they hire a real estate agent, the request is handed to the agent, who then reviews
the offer with the seller.
If no agents are involved in the real estate sale process, the buyer prepares their own offer and presents it directly to the seller. However, this is exceedingly unwise and inadvisable for all parties involved.
If this is the case, the agent will assist the buyer in creating an offer. Once the offer is complete, they’ll send it directly to the seller for review. If you don’t have a buyer’s agent, you can submit your offer directly to the listing agent, who can represent both you and the seller under a dual agency arrangement.
In most other transactions, you can make a verbal offer. However, in real estate, that’s not the case. A real estate offer must be in writing, involving much more than verbally settling a price. Your offer will outline how you envision the entire buying process unfolding.
There are two primary ways the selling party gets offers on the house. Traditionally, the best way to do it is to hand it directly to the seller (or the seller’s agent). However, it’s not unusual for people to send buying offers via email. Generally speaking, it’s best to have a backup and a second physical copy before handing it over to a seller.
This way, you both can reference it at the same time. It’s also suitable for security purposes.
Generally speaking, you should expect one of three things to happen:
Yay, you get to go forward on the terms you suggested. You are now locked into a deal, and you can expect to plan out your move. This is the best possible outcome you can achieve after sending out an offer in most situations.
Sometimes, sellers may make a counteroffer with minor changes to your offer. You can accept, decline, or create a counteroffer. The counteroffer usually indicates that you still have a good chance of getting the house.
If they choose another offer or don’t want to consider your offer, they’ll decline it. At this point, you may be able to start another offer, but the home may not even be on the market yet. Most realtors will not advise you to try a second offer if this happens.
While sellers’ agents can advise clients not to accept an offer, they do not have the right to reject an offer before the seller sees it. Even if the offer is ludicrously low, it’s not their right to do so. A seller’s agent has to show every single offer, even if the offer suggests a buying price of
three potatoes and a dollar.
The first thing you should do is speak with your agent and inform them of the situation. If possible, explain why you believe that this is the case. Technically, this could be a significant breach of contract and grounds for a lawsuit. Your agent can help determine the next course of action.
If at all possible, try to ask the seller if they have seen your offer directly. The seller may want to speak with your agent if they haven’t already. This is when one agent may have to lead a lawsuit against another.
Response times can vary from place to place, but getting a flood of offers on a single condo or co-op in New York is common. In New York, a response to an offer can take anywhere from one day to one week.
This entire process can sometimes take several days, and there may be a several-week wait period. This is more common in areas where homes are in high demand. It’s the seller’s way of ensuring they get the best possible offer among multiple offers.
However, there’s no set time when you will hear an offer. If you’re ever concerned about this, ask your agent for guidance on the next steps.
Most of the time, you can expect a home seller to reach out to you one way or another, and it’s a common courtesy. While it would be wonderful to hear from a seller every time you make an offer, the truth is slightly less than ideal.
There are no laws nationwide that require sellers to respond to every offer. If sellers don’t want to answer, they don’t have to. Unfortunately, this can make the buying process difficult.
Once the offer reaches the seller’s agent, the “Waiting Game” begins. This means that home buyers must wait while the seller considers each option. Once sellers have reviewed the offers they received, they will decide who gets the home.
It’s uncommon because it would cause a significant scandal in most firms. However, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. In fact, at NestApple, we’ve seen it happen with an agent who declined to show an offer from our brokerage, and the result was not good.
Choosing a real estate broker you trust makes a great deal of sense. Give us a call today.
Yes, you can withdraw an offer before signing a formal purchase contract. In most states, such as New York, real estate offers aren’t binding until the buyer and seller execute a binding agreement.
However, it would help if you were very careful about signing any offer submission form given to you by the listing agent. If you sign an offer to purchase form or any other customized offer submission form, you can be vulnerable to a lawsuit if you back out of an accepted offer.
While this is rare, we have seen instances such as McCarthy vs. Tobin in Massachusetts, where a judge ruled that
Generally, be very careful about signing anything, especially if it contains contract-like language. You’re just putting yourself needlessly into a situation where somebody can sue you. Don’t do it, especially if you are bidding on property in a market like NYC, where buyers email offers and don’t have to sign anything.
