I have been selling homes for over 20 years working through all kinds of markets and to all types of clients. The Nyack real estate market at the moment is in a bit of a feeding frenzy – – not unlike the national real estate market. When I am advising clients on how to make an offer on homes that come up in the Nyacks I can talk with a clear objective voice for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that I know the Nyack market, and have literally been in almost every home within its borders. It’s my job and my passion to know what each home can sell for in such a heated market. Also, I can look at the situation without emotion. I can compare my role to a surgeons role. We each have an objective. The surgeons goal is to successfully operate to make the patient better, and my role is to achieve a successful outcome for my client who is trying to buy a home.
This past November I found myself in my clients shoes when I fell in love with a vacation home in Cape Cod. The cape is a very competitive market with very little inventory. I happened to be very lucky, and found myself represented by an incredible real estate agent. Her enthusiasm and energy and her keen sense of the market instilled confidence, but buying this home still was a very emotional moment for me and it was difficult to be objective. I also knew that if I was serious about buying this home, there could be no mistakes. Agent to agent we discussed the game plan. We didn’t have enough to pay cash which immediately put us at a disadvantage. In a bold move we removed the mortgage contingency so our offer would be viewed like a cash offer. This is something you have to think very carefully about, but it can be quite effective. In our case we felt comfortable enough to remove the mortgage contingency. The next big decision was to decide how much to offer. We toyed with putting in an escalation clause in with the offer. An escalation clause says that whatever the highest offer is you will beat that offer by a predetermined amount. It can be effective in many situations, . We knew the asking price was fair, and our decision was whether to make a full price offer or make an offer over the asking price. In the end we made a decision to go 24k over the asking price. It was a strong offer, but by no means a slam dunk. We also decided to make the offer with no inspection contingency. Again, this is something you have to be very careful about, but I have been on enough inspections and felt there was very little to worry about.
In the end our offer was accepted, and we are very excited. We loved the home, the street, and the area, and were very grateful to our agent Kimberly for holding our hands throughout the process. We knew the top number where we were willing to go, and decided that would be it for us. If we didn’t get it, we would have been disappointed and the search would have to continue., but we are grateful that this time our offer worked!