Furnishings Are Not A Part Of Real Property

I had an offer come in on one of my listings today which was pretty low when compared to the recent comps sold. Along with the offer, the buyer’s agent spelled out the buyer’s thoughts on why his offer was so low.

Firstly, the property needs some work so he had discounted his price based on the cost of the required repairs (about $6,000). Ok, I get that and it’s probably fair to do so. Secondly, he had discounted his offered price by $16,000 because he was going to have to furnish the home. Hmmm...

Not making a lot of sense to me on that one. Furniture (no matter how nice) is not a part of real property. Furniture is personal property which doesn’t normally convey with a property unless the buyer is paying for it.

I’ll give you an example...let’s say a home is listed for $100,000 (unfurnished). The 3 most recent comps have sold for $89k, $97k, and $103,000 (this particular house sold fully furnished). Just to make it easy, let’s average those and make that our market value (again, only for ease of demonstration) of $96,333.

Then let’s say you offer $80,333 due to the fact that you have to furnish your new home. You are still offering $9,000 less than the lowest recent comparable sale (two of which were sold without furnishings just like the subject property). Can anyone see the flaw in that logic? The homes that sold for $89k and $97k without furnishings make up a good portion of how that market value is calculated and the buyer has completely dismissed them with his offer as written.

We haven’t even covered the fact that the furniture in the one comp that sold furnished was old and used while the buyer is trying to discount the price in order to buy brand new furniture. So as you can expect, I advised the seller to counter this offer with a more fair price.