Mark Wozniak: Okay so now we are that point where a buyer or even better, multiple buyers have made an offer on your home. What are the next steps, Leigh Anne?
Leigh Anne Monk: Sure, well first of all as offers do come to us in writing - and they typically come from the buyer’s agent - what we’ll do is review all those offers and we will present them to you, every single one. Our fiduciary responsibility to you as the seller is to make sure you understand exactly what the terms are for each and every deal.
For example, if you want to go through every single paragraph we’re happy to do that or if you just want the highlights we can give you those as well. Because the bottom line is you need to know what that buyer is offering you not just in price. A lot of times people think it is price only, but there are several key terms that we would like to point out to you as well during that offer review process.
And the concept behind that is you may come back and say I’m not going to change any price point, you may want to draw that line in the sand, so to speak, or we may say "Okay, keep the price the same but let’s compromise on a couple of the terms to make sure that we are giving back and forth," because it really does need to be a win/win for both the seller and the buyer.
Mark Wozniak: Right and it may turn out that a certain compromise position can work out perfectly acceptable for you and so, again, as our fiduciary responsibility to you we’ll help negotiate that contract to a final set of terms that works best for you. But one thing that we absolutely recommend is not to be concerned about having an emotional response to an offer that comes in. As Leigh Anne said we are going to present all offers to you even the ones that you would consider bad offers.
Usually that means one that came in with a lower price than what you were hoping for or some other set of terms that you just don’t find is in your interest. Well that’s fine that that that came in and you’ve got understand. The buyers are out there certainly looking for what works best for them, what’s a good deal for them and the bottom line is they took the time to visit your home and to put an offer together and that is something that is quite time consuming. It shows some real interest. So regardless of what is on that piece of paper that they submit to you, we just recommend don’t have an emotional response to it.
It is indeed a business transaction and so for any offer that comes in our recommendation - if it’s a good one and it’s okay to you - is to go ahead and accept it. But if not, don’t just reject it out of hand. It’s always best to at least offer up an initial counter offer to try and engage with that buyer and see if there is indeed some common middle ground. And as part of that discovery process to see if there is middle ground we’re going to go through all the terms of that purchase offer with you and there is so many things that can be countered from pricing to when the home closes to the amount of earnest money deposit and on and on.
So we’ll find out what you’d like to offer as a counter offer and we’re going to prepare that paperwork for you and we are going to present that in writing back over to the buyer’s agent and if the other side agrees or counter offers we’ll continue to go through that process until finally we have an acceptable agreement to both the buyer and the seller. And when we do that’s called "ratification of the contract." So that’s when both parties are saying, "We agree to all the terms. We’re ratified."
Leigh Anne Monk: Right. You know even in that preratification stage, I think one thing that really helps with that is that we work very closely with the buyer’s agent. We will have conversations to say, "Will this counter term work for your client?" and have some conversations back and forth so that we’re not having such a distant relationship so that it makes it a little more adversarial. I think having those conversations will allow us to present a counter that’s going to work for you as the seller but also works for the buyer so when we come together it’s not going to be this shock and surprise and we reach an agreement sooner.
Mark Wozniak: Sure, it helps take some of the guess work out of it. Are they going to accept this or not? We like to gather as much information as possible.
Leigh Anne Monk: So we do that on behalf of our sellers to make sure we are going to get to ratification as quickly as possible. And the reason we say that, is just because you’re ratified we all know that doesn’t mean you’re done. There are several other steps that have to happen between what we call contract ratification and settlement and in our next segment we will talk about that a little bit further.