Buying your home can sometimes involve tricky timing. There are a lot of factors involved sometimes. For this reason, home buying is almost always stressful! This is where your agent earns their commission. For example, you may have found the perfect house and are thinking about making an offer, but you feel pressured to make a decision when all you want to do is go home and think about it. Perhaps your agent tells you that another buyer is expected to make an offer later that day, so you shouldn't hesitate if you really want the house. What should you do? Trust your agent! Your agent can’t tell you what to do, but it’s important to understand in a situation like this what your agent’s role is and what it is not.

It is natural to feel some pressure from even the most easy-going real estate agent--and some misgivings about actually taking that next step and making an offer. If you really like a certain house, there is always the possibility that someone else will feel the same. Whether your local market is active or slow, it is a safe assumption that another offer is likely to come in...the seller, after all, does have a professional agent working full time to procure any and all offers possible. Perhaps you can afford to wait, and “sleeping on it” is an understandable choice, but moving as quickly as possible will minimize the possibility that the house will go to another buyer. Again, your agent cannot tell you what to do in a case like this. You’re the boss. But if we’ve heard another offer is expected, we are obligated to convey this to you.

In a slow market, many buyers understandably feel they can take all the time they want to write an offer and feel justified in writing very low offers with idea that you are the only buyer this seller has to deal with. Unfortunately this is rarely the case. In a slow market that has not yet become educated and adapted pricing appropriately, many deals may close at significantly lower prices than list price. But in a market like ours today, sellers know the market is slow. If they’ve decided to sell, they know what they’re in for, and if they’re serious about selling, they price their home appropriate to the market. In other words, homes sell for what they’re worth.

A slow market in other words does not necessarily equate to a significant discount off the list price, because the list price is in all likelihood pretty close to where it should be anyway. This is where I always come back to saying “trust your agent”. Here’s the thing, if you don’t trust your agent, you need to be working with someone else anyway. If you do trust them, then take them at their word. If they say another offer is expected, it is, and if they say that if you like the home you should probably make an offer right away, you should.