I want to make an offer on a home I love!

Terrific! You’ve found the perfect home and want to submit a purchase offer! In today’s market we need to put your offer in quickly. Before we can submit an offer on a home, there are a few things we need you to email or call/text me with:

Full legal name: Please email me the full legal name of anyone who will be on the purchase contract and/or mortgage as well as the phone number(s) and email address(es).

Purchase offer price: What price do you want to offer for the home? Let’s have a discussion about the list-to-sale price ratio in the neighborhood if we haven’t already, as that will tell you a lot about whether you should expect to pay below asking price, asking price, or above asking price based on the current market climate. Keep in mind for me to help you analyze the data and help you determine your offering price, we are required to have a buyer-client relationship.

Your walk-away price: Don’t expect to pay your initial offering price. It’s rare for a seller to accept an initial offer without some negotiating back and forth. In addition to deciding what offer you want to start with, we need to decide now how much you’re willing to pay for this property and what your walk-away price is before things get heated and emotional. I want to totally stay within your comfort zone and help you make a wise purchasing decision.

Closing date: Typically closing takes place 30-45 days from contract acceptance. Sometimes you can ask for a longer closing, but we wouldn’t expect it just because we asked. Therefore, if you want to move around July 1, plan on submitting the offer by mid May. If you’re paying 100% cash, you can often close much faster than 30 days (depending on the closing company), but 45 days is usually the required minimum if you’re using a mortgage loan to buy the property.

Earnest money: How much earnest money are you comfortable putting down on this property? Typically, contracts have at least $1,000 in earnest money. This earnest money is expected at the time we submit the offer, but that often doesn’t happen. The earnest money becomes part of your down payment. So on a $200,000 purchase, if you’re planning to pay 20% or $40,000 for a down payment and $2,500 in earnest money, then at closing you would owe an additional $37,500 for the remainder of the down payment.

Down payment: For the contract, we need to know how much you’re going to use for your down payment.

Closing cost credits: Do you need to ask the seller to contribute toward any of your closing costs or pre-paid expenses? They would ordinarily go toward the amount of closing cost fees you have to pay for on top of your down payment. If that’s a need, and you’ve gotten good advice from your loan originator, then we need to make your offer condition upon that—and understand that the amount the seller pays on your behalf is essentially coming off their asking price.

Home warranty: Do you want to ask the seller to provide a home warranty on the property?

Contingencies:  Are there any other contingencies we need to be aware of? Do you need to sell your current home before we can buy this home? (We’ll have this covered prior to this step, but sometimes it’s an issue.)

Lastly, buyers sometimes want to know what happens if the contract is accepted and they have a change of heart or the inspection reveals a huge problem.  Read here for information on getting out of a signed contract.

Want to review the purchase contract in advance? Great!

Oklahoma Uniform Contract of Sale of Real Estate – Residential (11/2016)

Oklahoma Uniform Contract of Sale of Real Estate – New Home Construction (11/2016)

Once we’ve talked everything through, I’ll write the contract and have you sign it via a program called Authentisign sent to your email. You can sign on a computer, tablet, or even your smartphone with just a few clicks.

Watch this two-minute video for a quick intro to signing documents digitally via Authentisign.

I’ll then submit it to the seller’s agent. While negotiations sometimes go quickly, be prepared that it could take 24–72 hours to negotiate the terms of the offer if the seller is out of town, wants to sleep on it, if we’re dealing with a corporate seller or bank, etc. Every seller is different. Some people make decisions quickly while others need time to think things through. Patience is now the name of the game once an offer has been submitted!