Seller is stalling on a full price offer, thoughts?

Question

Hey guys I am new and wanted to hear feed back on your BS’ometer about response from seller who is stalling on an offer.

Saturday we put a full price offer on a duplex property(unoccupied), and right before a 48hr mark of offer expiration the seller’s agent came back with this:

- seller is asking for “a couple more days” to respond to the offer. Explanation being: Property belonged to the parents and seller is one of 3 children who is on the title and is selling it. Seller needs more time to contact 2 other siblings in another state on if it’s OK to sell this property?! Claims it has nothing to do with purchase price, just permission to sell this property.

- Btw seller’s agent called our lender and verified our loan/finances and got “everything is great” back from lender.

Did the seller really contact a realtor and put their parents property for sale, name their price, allow showings all without getting any OK from their siblings? Only after receiving an offer they plan to ask siblings for OK? I sense BS and something fishy. Oh btw when we placed our offer, seller’s agent said they were expecting 2 more offers from other people who seen it prior to us. Not sure if other offers were received after ours went in, could be just a scare tactic.

We are still looking at other properties mean time, just wondering if seller is an idiot or playing some game?

Karl B. · Answer

You'd think the seller would ask for permission PRIOR TO putting the property on the market.

The seller is likely looking for better offers and is stalling. This is like high school prom all over again! :-)

And if it was a legit story the seller wouldn't need days to call two siblings and say, "Hi, we got 100% what we're asking for on the property. Should we take it?"

Based on the seller's clown game I hope you find another property that ends up being better and go under contract on that.

Alexander Kleyman · Answer

So it’s been some time, almost 2 months...! and I have an update: I am happy to report that yesterday we finally closed on this property. Congrats to us for acquiring our first rental property!

It turned out that there was no funny business going on, just disorganized the sellers. The property was an estate being sold by 2 or 3 kids of a deceased parent living in multiple states. Ran into hick-ups with improperly setup estate documentation, quitclaim deed rights, even a local court judge had to get involved to sort out the documents just days before our closing. We as buyers just remained patient and waited out all the issues and they arose and resolved on almost weekly basis lol.

Steve Milford · Answer

@Alexander Kleyman I say who cares, give them 1 extension of a few days. At the end, it comes down to price for my buyers usually. If it doesn't work out, then walk away. If Sellers sold it too low, they are going to be stinky during inspection phase, and want to put it back onto market. If Sellers have a hard time getting sibling agreement now, they are going to have same delays throughout contract. In my market, full-price offers after only a few days on market happen all the time. Seller motivation is interesting. And let them know that after expiration, you are going to go back and shop elsewhere, though if their plan doesn't work our, feel free to contact you again. If it goes pending and then comes back onto market, and you still want it, change your offer to better suit you and re-submit. I've resurrected Buyer's offers (as a Seller's Agent) that were more than 30 days old, when Seller's wants don't pan out.

I had a listing that received a cash offer at 90% of list price, short inspection, no appraisal. Sellers wanted at least 95% and countered. They didn't care that it was all cash. Buyer's Agent kept insisting that their offer was "so good". It wasn't what Seller wanted, so no deal.

Anthony Gayden · Answer

@Alexander Kleyman

How good of a deal are we talking here?

I personally would walk through hot coals if it meant a slam dunk deal.

Pavel U. · Answer

I can't stand when sellers pull this crap. I've seen it waaay too many times:

- I'll print the offer and bring it to the sellers tomorrow evening (what? is it 1997?)- The sellers are on a cruise with no phone service, I'll keep trying to get ahold of them (of course...)- It's a holiday, so we'll review the offer the day after

If I were you, I would call the agent and tell them your offer expires in 5 hours. Be ready to walk away though. I've done it before & walked away.

Can't blame them though lol, if I was selling I would also try to get multiple offers and start a bidding war.

Jay Hinrichs · Answer

while would a should a we all understand but this is quite common.. give them the time they need and this deal will go together.. its a legit excuse..

Josh Bakhshi · Answer

Alex, you didn't lose anything with the offer.  Don't stress yourself and bring emotions into it.  For you, this is a business.  For the seller, it could be their HOME.  Keep making offers until something sticks.  At the same time you can tell seller's agent that after 10am tomorrow the offer will decrease by 1K/hour.  This is a numbers game. They only have 1 property and you have dozens to look at.  You're in the driver's seat.

Will Barnard · Answer

It is very possible that the agent does not know enough to do their job properly so the excuse may be valid. It also may be the case that they are stalling for more offers to get a multiple offer situation.

Rather than gues which one it is, why not call the agent and put him or her on blast asking why he or she would list a property without the prior full consent of all parties. Listen to the answer carefully and decide if it is BS or not. If you feel it is BS, then give notice that they have until the end of the day to sign or counter your offer otherwise you are walking (even if you really are not walking) to place a sense of urgency on both agent and sellers.

Theresa Harris · Answer

@Matthew Olszak  People never cease to amaze me.

@Alexander Kleyman If the home belonged to the parents, one of the kids maybe having difficulty letting it go or perhaps they are out of town.  Even if they all signed off on listing it, they may want to discuss the sale's price.

Matthew Olszak · Answer

My response as a buyer's agent to that first part would have been, "Wait, all parties on title didn't sign the listing agreement?". If the list agent stumbles upon answering I'd know its BS. But in practice its completely realistic that they just jumped on the listing after being told that "for sure" the other parties want to sell too without verifying that.

They could be playing games, but are you willing to walk? Don't throw out a deadline unless you are willing to uphold it, otherwise your bluff could get called and your negotiation power goes down to zilch.

Funny story from a couple weeks ago, somewhat related. Listing comes up for a 4 unit here, only 1 unit is available to be shown. My client offers almost full list, cash, close in 2 weeks. List agent claims she has another offer with "better price and terms". Ok, so I call to ask about those "better" terms, supposedly another offer willing to waive inspection. So we revise waiving inspection and increase price to match list. She says sorry, the other offer is still better. Next day, MLS is updated with a price change, INCREASING the list price almost 20%! Oh, and she added that she is related to the seller (she didn't have any completed sales in the MLS). So basically a FSBO family sale, they thought they were under-priced after getting presumably tons of traffic, and are now sitting on the market for being overpriced especially considering only 1 of 4 units can be shown pre-acceptance.

Seller is stalling on a full price offer, thoughts?

Most Popular Reply