When there are more offers on the table, the home seller has to choose from all of them and there are chances your offer isn’t the best one.
Don’t just cross your fingers and hope for the best, here are few tricks to win the bidding war.
Show you care about that home
Bidding wars don’t always mean a lot of money between the contenders. In this case it’s quite possible for the seller to want to receive tens of thousands more from a sale. Yet, in most cases, we talk thousands of bucks and in this case emotions can already give you an advantage.
If you really like that house and consider it to be the perfect fit for your family, show this to the seller.
You can draft a letter describing how you plan to restore some of the antique decorations, get the garden into a great shape once again, how it will allow your family to find a place to call home etc.
When we planned on buying our country home, the seller already had an offer on the table. I don’t know if it was better than ours, but what made him sell it to us was surely how we looked at the property.
While the house was in horrible condition (roof is damaged, the house is in ‘red’, there is a lot of work to be done, since it was more of a ruin than a house, he was impressed with our plans to repair the woodwork (the house is built on some gorgeous oak beams), to make it bigger, preserve what we can from the old building and just make solid repairs and not demolish it, as most would have done.
We went there with our 2 year old daughter (back then) and told the owner this will allow the little one to experience the life in the country, to see animals and enjoy the fresh air.
We loved the house and wanted to repair it. We respected its history and, instead of destroying, we were planning to make it better.
Most people are emotionally attached to their belongings, a house is such a thing.
If the seller can see that you really care about that property and wouldn’t destroy their efforts there, it might be what you need to win the bidding war.
Be prepared and act fast
There’s nothing a seller hates more than dealing with people who are unprepared or who are too difficult to deal with.
Make sure you have a flexible schedule and allow your seller enough time to actually vacate the property.
If you were serious in your personal finance endeavors, chances are you have a hefty down payment prepared for this buy. The bigger the down payment, the better chances to get a better mortgage deal from your lender and also get noticed by the home seller.
Another trick to stand out is to cover your own closing costs. If you can afford this cost, it can give you an advantage over the people who expect the seller to pay for a portion of their closing costs.
Do your homework properly – research the properties you are interested before the showings, so that you can make an offer on the spot, if that home is really what you are after. Imagine how this makes you look, compared to other home buyers who need days to come with an offer.
You can also add an escalation clause into your offer, should other buyers start sending offers.
Showing the home seller you qualify for the loan, with a pre-approval letter from your lender is another way to increase your chances to win a bidding war.
These are just few tricks for you, as a home buyer, to get an edge in a bidding war. What else would you add?
