Lowball Offers

The key to handling an offer is to corral the emotions so they don’t get in the way. You’ll feel anger if the offer is lowball. You’ll feel the buyers are idiots. Why can’t they see all the work you’ve put into the house? The decorating and colors you spent so much time deciding on, and the memories you’ve created in this home? These feelings are natural, and all buyers go through them at offer time. Luckily, your agent stays calm and lets you vent your anger before pointing out that many buyers start out with a low offer, that it’s best to contain your emotions and decide on what’s the lowest offer you can live with. Obviously, the buyers liked something about your home or they wouldn’t go to the trouble of writing an offer. Some people start out the buying process by writing a low offer, knowing you’ll counter up to your lowest price. So, that’s what you do. You’ll have about a 50 percent chance they’ll accept your counter or come back with another counter. If you don’t counter, you’ll have zero chances.
If your counter is reasonable for the market and the buyers are serious, they’ll often take it. Sometimes bargain hunters will take a shotgun approach and write a bunch of low offers, hoping to get lucky. If this is the case, you won’t hear back from them. It was a one-shot effort, and you haven’t lost anything.