It Can Take Many Counter Offers to Sell a Home in the Sacramento Real Estate Market

It ain't over until the fat lady sings. Some negotiations take time, especially for a Sacramento real estate agent. It doesn't need to be a short sale, either, to end up with 4 or 5 or more counter offers on a transaction. In fact, many short sale offers are accepted in the first go-around, but a lot of regular sellers who have equity are finding that buyers want to play the negotiation game. Some carry it to extremes.

And who's to blame them, really? Buyers want to make sure they get the lowest price possible as protection against flat or falling markets. Most want a discount. Yet sellers want to squeak out every thin dime of equity that they can.

This means that many traditional transactions can take a few days to reach a compromise. My worst was probably when I represented buyers who wanted to purchase a particular home in Land Park, near the Sacramento Zoo, from a seller / agent. It took 5 weeks this summer to negotiate that transaction. At one point, the seller / agent even took her home off the market. Much of the time she was unresponsive. I lost count of the number of counter offers we negotiated. But the buyers hung in there and they eventually got the home.

The problem is by the time an agreement is reached, sometimes the contract can be so messed up that it's difficult to ascertain intent. In these situations, it's sometimes better to simply redraw a clean contract.

Over the weekend, a Sacramento seller finally sold her home. The buyer's agent presented an all-cash offer to the sellers, but by the time they arrived at a meeting of the minds, it was evident that the buyer had expected to obtain financing. It was also eventually made clear that the buyer wanted a contingency for selling his home, yet that fact had also been missing from the original purchase agreement.

This happened mostly because the buyer's agent is a part-time agent. In the middle of the offer, the agent sent a blank TDS signed by the buyer for no apparent reason. You just can't make this stuff up. Yet, the offer was finally accepted. It took only 4 counter offers and 7 days. That's not so bad. But tell that to the poor sellers who feel as though they've been put through the wringer.