3 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Home Offer Without Raising Your Price
We’re heading into home buying season and sellers are sprucing up their homes and buyers are already checking out listings online. From now until school starts up again this fall, buyers will be hitting the streets and looking at homes to buy. In the late spring and summer months, there are more new listings and more new homes for sale.
Tips on Making a Great Offer
Sellers know when buyers begin to shop it’s time to list and buyers know when homes hit the market it’s time to buy. If you’re a seller, that’s a good thing because you’re more likely to get the price you want because there are more buyers out there. But if you’re a buyer and the market is beginning to heat up, you may find you’re competing with other buyers for the very same property. Here are three things buyers can do to sweeten a home offer with raising the price.
The All-Cash Offer
Okay, one of the very best ways to get your home offer accepted is to offer cash. An all cash offer lets the sellers know immediately there won’t be any problems with a loan application. Even for buyers with perfect credit and a sizable down payment the approval process still takes time. Or, instead of making an all-cash offer you can make a larger down payment on your loan and let the sellers know that you’ll be putting 30 or 40 percent or more down.
Get Personal
Another way to sweeten the deal is to get personal. Take a moment and literally write out a letter to the sellers telling them how much you love their home and why you’re buying. You can mail this letter to them or hand it to them or their real estate agent when making a home offer. Consider something like, “We absolutely love your home! Our family is growing and we certainly need the room and you have the perfect house for us!” You may not have a growing family or you may not have a family at all but a personal letter will create a connection.
Get Pre-Qualified
In today’s marketplace, most sellers won’t consider a purchase offer without some sort of letter from a lender indicating the buyers have spoken with a lender and are serious about buying. But there are prequalification letters and preapproval letters.
A prequalification letter indicates the buyers have in fact spoken with a lender but a preapproval shows that not only have the buyers contacted a lender but also applied for a home loan. The loan application has been documented as paycheck stubs, tax returns and bank statements have been reviewed as has a credit report and credit scores. This letter should state that you are credit approved and all you need to do is find a property to buy.
