Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:For those saying the seller has all the power, and the buyer shouldn't get anything out of this... Even financially, this is not completely accurate. Suppose seller thinks they can get $1.4M on the open market. Assuming buyer seller agents take 5% ($70K), that nets seller $1.33. Seller and buyer can split the difference and transact at $1.365M for a win-win.
And that's before you factor in any value the seller gets out of doing a quick off-market transaction. So while seller should drive what they expect to get on the open market, the win-win transaction is splitting the foregone agent fees.
Maybe in a cold or neutral market this makes sense. In a hot (seller’s) market, no. The benefit the buyer gets is knowing they won’t have to outbid anyone else. That’s worth a lot in the current environment. Seller pockets most or all of the (saved) commission. If the buyer doesn’t like it, they can take the chance that they’ll have to pay more in a bidding war and that they might not get the house — which I believe is in the neighborhood that they are already renting in, right?
Anonymous wrote:For those saying the seller has all the power, and the buyer shouldn't get anything out of this... Even financially, this is not completely accurate. Suppose seller thinks they can get $1.4M on the open market. Assuming buyer seller agents take 5% ($70K), that nets seller $1.33. Seller and buyer can split the difference and transact at $1.365M for a win-win.
And that's before you factor in any value the seller gets out of doing a quick off-market transaction. So while seller should drive what they expect to get on the open market, the win-win transaction is splitting the foregone agent fees.
Anonymous wrote:For those saying the seller has all the power, and the buyer shouldn't get anything out of this... Even financially, this is not completely accurate. Suppose seller thinks they can get $1.4M on the open market. Assuming buyer seller agents take 5% ($70K), that nets seller $1.33. Seller and buyer can split the difference and transact at $1.365M for a win-win.
And that's before you factor in any value the seller gets out of doing a quick off-market transaction. So while seller should drive what they expect to get on the open market, the win-win transaction is splitting the foregone agent fees.
Anonymous wrote:I'll tell you how it went for us as the seller. We had a price in mind, based on recent comps. The neighbor/buyer offered us 89% of our asking price. We said no. The neighbor/buyer offered us 97% of our asking price. We said no. The neighbor paid 100% of our asking price.
We didn't mind that they tried to negotiate but we had no incentive to compromise.
Anonymous wrote:OP seems to think this transaction is like a divorced couple when one buys the other out of the house. The sellers are in the driver’s seat here; it’s their house! You pay them a price they are willing to take or they put it on the market. What’s “fair” is subjecting it to the market. As buyers you are already getting an unfair advantage by not having to compete with other buyers; you have to pay a premium for that privilege.
Anonymous wrote:Op they’d be crazy to sell it to you without going on the market unless your offer is higher than they think they’ll get.