Using Low Comps to Justify Offer

[Peter Pezzano]

I was curious if anyone was bringing low comps with them or sending them to the seller when making their offer to justify? Especially if the offer is much lower than expectations. Also open to peoples opinions on whether or not you think it's a good idea or not.

Thanks!

[Andrew Johnson]

@Peter Pezzano I use the comps to construct my offer price but I don't present them with the offer to "justify" my price.  I'll talk to my agent about how I arrived at my offer price, where I want to close, etc.  However, I don't want to give comps and bullet points as to why their property isn't worth what they think that it's worth.  Mostly because I don't want to end up with some back and forth debate through agent intermediaries as to why their property is or isn't "special" or what comps they would prefer that I look at, etc.  I'm not looking to have them attempt to sway me to a higher offer price.  

The reality is that any good sellers agent knows the comps as well as you do.  If they are doing their job they can educate their seller on the comps.  They're the same comps that everyone else will be pulling to justify their offers and likely the same comps the appraiser will be using as well.  But if the seller doesn't want to hear it then it won't make a difference.  The seller's agent also knows if they're getting traction, if they have competing offers, etc.  I can't help but think that they know when a property is overpriced.    

Now maybe my agent has used my rationale, comps, etc. to try and sway the seller's agent and seller.  Who knows.  What I have done in the past is had my agent tell a seller's agent:  "If the Fed raises rates and mortgage rates go up, the offer is only going to get worse."  And that was about two weeks before a Fed meeting where they did end up raising rates.  I got my offer accepted in 24 hours.  But, hey, I could have been the only offer and was only leveraging time rather than comps.  It's always hard to do factually accurate postmortem.