Here's a story

TheDuckis

We put an offer on house #2 on Monday. We were told that there was at least 1, possibly 2 other offers coming in and that the sellers would be looking at all offers on Thursday.

Yesterday our agent calls and says change of plans. She (our agent) will present our offer in person to the sellers last night, and we should be there. I've never heard this before, but apparently in Palo Alto it's common to just get everyone in one place to  sign the paperwork instead of faxing contracts all over the place for 2 days. Fine.

Our offer was at full asking price. At the time we met last night, neither of the other two offers had come in. BUT, the sellers wanted us to offer more money. Apparently, the guy had a number in his head that was 55K higher than asking. We're assuming his strategy had been to price the house low and incite a bidding war. Except with us as the only bidders, he wasn't getting what he wanted.

We upped our offer 10K in good faith, but I felt really squicky about it. It was his bad for pricing the place too high, why should I have to pay for it now that the outcome wasn't what he wanted? And if he wanted a bidding war, whythefuck did he agree to see our offer before the other promised ones came in?

So the seller's agent comes in to talk to us, and she gives us some bullshit speech about not losing the house over 5-10K, because that only works out to about $5 a month (which it doesn't it works out to 13-27 a month in principal only). Plus we weren't talking about another 5-10, we were talking about 5-10K over our escalation, which put us at 15-20K over asking. Again, when there were no other offers on the table. Also, the sellers didn't actually counter, they were just trying to see how much higher they could get us to go.

So after 2.5 hours of back-and-forth, we walked. Fck them. Afterwards the seller's agent told our agent that the sellers were holding out for 10K more. IMO, they walked away from a deal over 10K, we walked away over 20K. We felt kindof awesome afterwards. I've said before that my favorite feeling in the world is righteous indignation, and we had a grand old time talking about what douchebags the sellers were last night.

So this morning we get an actual counter-offer. Up our offer by another 5K, 21 day close, and free rent-back for them until May 31. ARE THEY FCKING SERIOUS? Oh and that offer only stands until 10am, so if we want it, we have to scramble to do more paperwork. H wants to counter back for the original asking price and tell them we took the 10K off for the time they wasted last night.

**O-Face**

I'd be tempted to do what your H wants to.  Just to fck with them.  That is a load of bullshizz.  Seriously, what a joke!

GBCK

I like Mr TD's plan

hmonkey

mama nola and i have more bleach!

dharmabunny

Mr. TD has the right idea.

They're f@cking with you, time to f@ck back.  You've more or less walked away from the house, you're in a much better position than the seller.

zsazsa-stl

That is insanity.  Maybe you don't want a house full of their a**hole karma.

Cant_wait!

Ew, what idiots. Mr. Duckis has a good plan, I say go with that.

mrsconn23

Oh yeah, I totally think that y'all need to screw with them back since they're being such assholes about this. 

I've never heard of pricing a house *below* what you woudl take to start a 'bidding war'.   But I've never sold a house, so what do I know?

Either way, Mr. Seller sounds like a fcktard.

TheDuckis

The seller apparently thinks it's 2006. His realtor deals mostly in Palo Alto, which is its own little bubble of crazy. Houses there are listed in the multi-millions, bidding wars are still common-ish, and it's not unheard of to get a cash offer at well above asking. Also, no contingencies, because rich people don't care if the roof leaks.

Thing is, this house isn't in Palo Alto, it's 2 cities north of Palo Alto, which operates like the rest of the world. Their agent is probably losing money on this listing, because it's taking time away from her more valuable properties. We think she's pushing the owners (and thus, us) to close fast, and they're digging their heels in.

So this is what we said back (I made H soften it a bit):
[X (asking+10K)]. We get the house when we close (that can be the 31st of May, for all we care). I'm not paying them to live in my house.  If they want $5K more (that's .55% of the X we offered, by the way), we need to see the house again. The thing that pisses me off the most: the 2.5 hours I burned of my work day yesterday. They want us to pay them to live in their own house? If we do that, then they should pay me for my time last night. Fckers.

hmonkey

i still don't understand the whole offering more than asking.  if that's all they're asking, why offer more?  and don't "that's just how it's done" me because i will "don't hate the playa, hate the game" right back at you.  i will.  i really will.

TheDuckis

The house is priced below its value, and we do want it. We figured kicking in another 10K would help us close the deal faster. Honestly, their asking+55k pipe dream is still in our range, but there's no way in hell we're giving them that.

6fsn

Gaaaah, at all of it.  Good luck.