When Paige Schulte and her family needed more space earlier this year, they decided to sell their house and buy a new one.
But buying a house in Gig Harbor, Washington, didn’t prove to be so easy, as they were competing with multiple buyers on every house they saw.
“We specifically wanted a certain floor plan that was really popular here,” Schulte says.
The seller wanted $1.5 million for the house they ultimately settled on. To make their bid stand out from all the rest, Schulte, a real estate agent, looked for ways they could offer the seller better terms than other buyers. “Price is king but terms are queen and she runs the show,” Schulte says.
First, they sweetened the deal through the appraisal: If it turned out to be lower than expected, they offered to cover the gap between the appraised price and the purchase price.
Then they reassured the seller that they would not back out of the deal by waiving the inspection. “I knew that once I got in there, I would have an inspector come in and I would pay for whatever needed to be fixed,” she says.
Their strategy worked and the Schultes closed on their house in February.
While Schulte admits those concessions are not in the best interests of the buyer – and would readily tell her clients that – those are the types of strategies buyers are using to buy a house in today’s market.
Bad news for home buyers
In their 2021 Housing Forecast, Realtor.com predicted that 2021 would be tough for buyers. Sellers would be able…
