Entertaining an offer
The house had only been for sale about three weeks when the first offer came in. The offer was considerably less than our asking price, but it came on the weekend of our first open house where two other couples indicated interest – one expressed intent to make an offer. Our agent told them to get with it if they wanted to make an offer because they weren’t going to be first in.
We were out of town while all this went on, and were dealing with a family emergency most of that weekend, so I told our agent we couldn’t respond until we got back. I also thought this would allow time for additional offers to come in, if they were going to. That strategy seems to have paid off. By the time we got home, the first offer had also been raised (it seems the word got around). Since it also specified a fast close, which we are also interested in, we countered that modified first offer with a “split the difference” amount getting us closer to what we needed. With a little back and forth on terms, by Wednesday we were “under contract.” I am pretty sure we would not have this same story to tell if we had tried to sell it ourselves!
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