One of my real estate associates at RE/MAX Presidential recently went on a vacation and I agreed to handle her clients. Yes, we all need vacations (even real estate agents) to recharge our batteries and add a little adventure to our lives. In her case, it was a motorcycle trip in Wyoming and Montana with her husband.
One of the cases involved a town house with three offers, all below the asking price, and the seller was holding firm.
Hey, people seemed to be lining up so why not hold out for more money? They were already selling at a loss and the press seems to be reporting a “pick-up” in the real estate market. And isn’t this a real estate negotiation strategy?
Well, not really.
When I took over, the offers were already about ten days old and the buyers were losing interest, fast… and the buyer agents were getting impatient. The story is more involved but I’ll just get to the meat.
The sellers had tried to wheel and deal verbally, but agents know that they need to see counter-offers in writing. And then, one of the buyers withdrew their offer. The two remaining were also threatening to walk. [side note: most real estate offers in Virginia do not have written deadlines unless specified by the buyer or seller]
When the seller decided to take action, I scanned in the paperwork and uploaded it to DocuSign, my digital signature service. The seller was impressed with the ease of the technology, clicked where instructed and the counter was ready. Sent! And promptly REJECTED!
So they countered the second offer, and it was accepted with a minor change and “clean-up”.
“We want it back by 5:30 or it is withdrawn,” said the buyer agent.
Since Mrs. Seller works in Washington D.C. and Mr. Seller works in Fairfax, Virginia, getting the “cleaned-up”, accepted contract quickly signed using digital signatures helped save the best contract of the three. Waiting was a gamble that almost back-fired, and if the technology had not been in place then they would have been back to square one.
