Accepting an offer on your home from a serious buyer should feel like crossing the finish line on a marathon process. Unfortunately, many sellers soon find out that the sale price they just agreed to is often subject to quite a bit of change.
The fact is, going from offer to close is often where the real challenge begins, and it’s also where many sellers, eager to close and move on, begin to lose money.
According to a survey by Clever Real Estate, nearly 9 in 10 home sellers make concessions to buyers, including offering price reductions and making repairs. This reportedly results in a typical concession value of $7,200.
So, is the offer price actually what you’re going to net from your buyer? Typically, no, unless you take a few important steps to protect yourself from mistakes and oversights that can lead to losing thousands.
The power of working with an agent
First and foremost, though there are pros and cons to working with a real estate agent, there’s a reason why it’s fairly standard practice: It’s very useful to have an advocate and thought partner in your corner.
As consumer confidence wobbles, the overall market shifts more toward buyers, and certain metros—such as San Antonio, TX, and Atlanta—see rising home sale cancellations, your agent can help you figure out how to navigate moments of uncertainty and unease.
“I just had a house where about $20,000 worth of issues came up on inspection,” says Claudia Zucker, a real estate agent and broker in upstate New York. “My seller was ready to just take $20,000 off the price. I said, ‘Let's wait and see what they actually ask for.’ She said she didn't want to lose them, and I said, ‘How about we just sleep on it?’ She agreed, and they ended up only asking for $11,000.”
Even the simple act of waiting and seeing is made easier when you have an expert who has done this hundreds or thousands of times before advising you to do so. In this instance, it saved a seller $9,000.
Get ahead of an inspection with a pre-inspection
After agreeing to a deal, a buyer will often pay for an inspection of the home. The inspector will look at all aspects of the home—including the roof, plumbing, electrical, and HVAC systems. This is often the basis for buyers beginning to ask for things like repairs or a price reduction. If their deal includes an inspection contingency, they’ll be able to back out or force your hand to make those changes, especially if it’s for major red flags like significant foundation cracks or structural damage.
The best way to preempt your buyer flagging these issues? Do an inspection yourself. A pre-inspection, says Zucker, helps you identify what needs fixing with the home—and either make those repairs before putting the home on the market, or make buyers aware of them ahead of time.
“If you put all of that in the listing ahead of time, either in the agent's notes or in the public-facing description, you can head off a lot of negotiation when the buyer does their inspection,” Zucker says. “I think that kind of diligence goes a long way toward making sure nothing goes wrong.”
You and your agent can do an informal pre-inspection yourself, or you can hire professionals to do it and produce an official report. Either way, disclosing what you know to be in poor shape or that could make someone pause will go a long way toward establishing transparency and trust with your prospective buyers.
Build a deal that gives you leverage
A poorly negotiated deal is also an opportunity for buyers to claw back some of what they offered you. Putting yourself in the strongest possible position to start, and coming prepared with alternatives, allows you to set boundaries—and enforce them—on your own terms.
Experts say that the appraisal gap is where you’ll often see sellers lose the most money. If your home goes into contract for $500,000 and the buyer’s lender appraises it at only $480,000, there’s now a $20,000 shortfall. Buyers can use this gap to say that you should split or eat the difference, if you let them.
“Insist on an appraisal gap contingency that has a set cap written into your contract,” says Blaz Korosec, a licensed agent and founder of real estate firm Investorade. For example, “$10,000 is my max.” This way, you limit the buyer’s capacity to ask you to make up the difference.
The closer you get to the finish line, the more likely a buyer is to develop cold feet—and use that as leverage.
Korosec calls this "the last kiss of profit failure": a buyer who engineers a delay in the final 10 days, claiming a lender issue or something they just "found" that concerns them, betting that you're too far along to push back.
His advice: Build a hard close date into the contract with a per diem penalty for carrying costs—typically $80 to $250 per day—so that any delay comes at the buyer's expense, not yours. And always keep a backup offer warm, confirmed in writing.
"That one piece of paper can save you thousands," he says. "It's power that most sellers give up the second they sign a contract."
More broadly, offers loaded with contingencies and financing restrictions open you up to pitfalls at every stage. That's not to say those deals won't close—but a cleaner offer at a slightly lower number is sometimes a safer bet than a higher one that gives the buyer more chances to renegotiate.
Be willing to walk away
Perhaps the most powerful thing you can do in a situation where the sale of your home hangs in the balance is to permit yourself to walk away if the deal goes beyond what you’re comfortable with.
This is most effective when you set parameters for yourself at the beginning of the process, not the end.
“Decide early on what we may call your friction threshold. This is the point where additional requests no longer make sense in connection with the deal you have originally accepted,” says Johana Williams, regional manager at Utopia Management. “Most sellers don’t set a threshold or a personal ceiling upfront, which pushes them to keep on saying yes to small increments without them noticing that they ended up renegotiating their own price downward.”
In short: Don’t be afraid to say no, and don’t be afraid to walk away. At worst, this means giving up a deal that doesn’t work for you. At best, says Williams, you demonstrate that “you are willing to do whatever it takes to protect your number.”
Just be sure that your contract gives you this power: Sellers can back out for a number of reasons, but those who don’t have contingencies or other protections in place may open themselves up to legal challenges by the buyer.
Renegotiation, concessions, and deal-making—these are all crucial parts of the home-selling process, and it’ll be difficult, unless you’re in a red-hot market, to avoid them. But losing thousands of dollars from your agreed-upon sale price doesn’t have to be a given, especially if you go into the situation knowing how to protect your power. It’s your house, after all—at least, until the sale goes through.
Eric Goldschein is a writer covering real estate, personal finance, and travel trends. He previously served as content lead at Orchard, and his work has appeared in NerdWallet, Fundera, Business Insider, and other outlets. Eric lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he is saving up for a home of his own.
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