And The Winner Is.....??

Good job with the carpet. Now just lose the guns, please.

Well, we are making an offer on a house! It will be official on Monday, but we're "All Systems Go," so there you have it. Let me talk to you a minute about how we arrived at our offer price. First, I looked at the 5 neighborhood comps and what they sold for versus what the asking price was. In Realtor-speak, this is the SP/LP% (sale price/list price %). I took the average of the 5 and got one price based on that number. Then, I looked at the sale price per square feet (sp/sf) and took an average of the five. I based another price on that number. Then, I averaged the two together, and arrived at our magic number.

Now, we would like the seller to pay closing, so I added x thousand dollars to our magic number to cover closing. And there you have it. I shot this adjusted magical number to our Realtor and our loan person (of course). Our Realtor recommended offering a bit lower than the magic number so that we could negotiate up to it, if need be. Our loan person said that it was right in line with the other homes that had recently sold. Of course it was; I have a calculator!

Okay, so there you have it. We will hear in a few days whether the sellers will accept or counter our offer. So, I will let you know what happens. Until then, I want to talk to you as a recent seller/current buyer: make sure you have priced your house so that it is in line with your neighborhood. If your price is either much higher or much lower than an average range for the area, buyers will say "I don't think so!" in the former case and "What's wrong with that house? Are they desperate?" in the latter case. Work with your Realtor on coming up with a number that you are, if not over the moon about, at least satisfied with. Know that you will most likely have to come down in price, at least a bit, so build that cushion in to your asking price.

I'll leave you with a couple of more observations about some houses that we recently saw: personalized door knocker (Our thought: Oh, great, they'll take that with them, and we'll have stupid screw holes in our door). Broken, cheap, builder-issue doorbell (Seriously? Spend $15 and get an upgraded ringer at the home improvement store). Dirty--really dirty--white carpet (Again--seriously?)