My fiancee and I put an offer in on a home recently. The house has been sitting on the market for well over a year and the homeowner has dropped the asking price several times. Our offer was the first.
According to the real estate agent, an additional offer has come in. Also, according to the real estate agent, the homeowner wanted to know several details concerning what we do for a living, how much we make and a bunch of other personal details typically asked by something like a co-op or condo board.
We’ve delivered our answers, but I’m left wondering whether there are any guidelines or laws governing what a real estate agent may ask potential buyers on behalf of the homeowner. Any guidance would be appreciated greatly.
As long as it’s not in violation of federal or state Fair Housing guidelines the Seller (via the agent) can ask you almost anything they want. It’s up to you if you think it’s germane to the sale or not.
I’ve always wondered how RE agents handle clients who are ‘different". Suppose you show up at the RE office dressed like Osama Bin Laden, and you ask to see a house in a Jewish neighborhood. along the way, you drop comments about the "Zionist dogs’, and how you approved of Al_Quedah. You (the agent ) have a problem-how do you "discourage’ this guy without getting sued? After all, you will have to deal with the same clientele-and how will you do if you sell a house to a muslim fanatic?
I work in New Jersey real estate, and we have had this situation. You have to show them any house they ask, but you can mention it’s “within walking distance to houses of worship,” and also show them some houses in other areas. If they make an offer on the first house, you’d probably tell the other agent who you were dealing with, but if the sellers accept the offer, there’s not much the agents can do about it.
I never had to answer to a board when I bought my condo. Do condos and co-ops do character checks???
I would be very wary of questions like this from a seller. On the one hand, they may be trying to qualify you for financing, that is, determine if it’s likely that you will be able to obtain financing. Buyers usually put this as a contingency in the contract, and if they fail to get financing the seller is screwed and has to start over. The preferred way to do this is to bring a letter from a lender showing you can qualify for a loan of a certain amount, rather than disclosing private info to a seller.
But on the other hand, you may have disclosed information that helps them decide what kind of a counter-offer to make, if you did not make an offer at the asking price. They may be trying to figure out how much they can squeeze out of you.
We’re pre-approved up to the asking price, with no contingency on the sale of our existing home. The seller knows this.
Which is what makes this perplexing. I find it highly unlikely that two offers came in at approximately the same time after the house sat on the market for so long with little or no interest. I find it even more unlikely that the two bids were so close that the seller has to essentially choose between the two based on some characteristic of the deal other than the monetary value of the offer.
Condos generally don’t, although they are entitled to. Their only remedy if they don’t like you is to match your offer to purchase the condo (right of first refusal). Few condo associations have the wherewithal or the inclination to make good on that.
Coops, on the other hand, can refuse to allow the transaction for any reason not proscribed by law. Generally you will have an interview with the board, who may ask for proof of your financial status, as well as all kinds of prying questions (how do you handle child care? etc.)
Your best tactic is to show immediate disinterest. You are not obligated to answer any questions, but this does not imply they can ask anything.
Be quiet and poker faced. You made an offer, and you should worry about your offer only. If they counter, work only around the counter off they make. When you made your offer, you probably expected to pay more than your offer, but less than the asking price – the meeting/compromise point in price… Focus only on this part of the proposition that you initiated.
It practically a law of the real estate universe, and it happens all the time. No activity for forever, then everyone wants it at the same time. It happens way too often for mere chance to be involved, there must be some sort of supernatural synchronicity involved.
Might it also be possible that the agent knew that someone else was thinking about it but did not hurry to make a bid because of the lack of interest? When you made a bid, the agent let the other party know.
I recently sold a property and my agent let all other buyers who had expressed even a vague interest know when a bid was made. We got another bid.
I’d just tend to think that if conversations were going on at that level, why would the second bidder not put a bid in that the homeowner would prefer over ours? Based on the behavior of the seller, I’ve got to think that the second bid (if it exists) was essentially equivalent to ours. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation with the seller.
Just to update, I just received the phone call that our offer was accepted, so maybe my suspicions were unfounded. Thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts in the thread.