Negotiation Tips To Use When Buying A House
Buying a house without a real estate agent's assistance is not easy. Therefore, hiring an agent should be your first step after getting preapproved for a mortgage. Your agent can help you find a house to buy and negotiate on the deal. Here are some of the ways your agent can help you negotiate when buying a house that might help you land the best deal when purchasing a home.
Compute Your Offer as a Whole
The first thing to understand is the importance of viewing your offer as a whole. A purchase offer contains numerous components, including the offer amount and contingencies. If you subtract all the contingencies from the offer amount, it tells you the offer as a whole. This amount is the most significant aspect of your purchase offer.
For example, suppose you find a home for sale for $300,000 that you want to buy. If you only want to pay $290,000 for it, you could write the offer for $300,000 and ask for $10,000 of contingencies. The result will be paying $290,000 if the seller accepts your offer.
Add the Right Conditions to the Purchase Offer
The next step in negotiating is adding the right conditions to the purchase offer. Any condition you add to the offer is a contingency. Contingencies require the sellers to do something or pay something. If you add the right ones, you protect yourself and save money. Adding the right ones also presents the opportunity to renegotiate.
Update Your Offer After the Home Inspection
An example of renegotiating from a contingency involves the home inspection. If you request a home inspection contingency, you can hire a company to perform the inspection. If they find out that the home has problems you did not know about initially, you can ask the seller for additional things.
For example, imagine if the home inspector found out that the roof has leaks. You can ask the seller to fix the roof before closing on the house or to lower the purchase price. If the roof repairs cost $5,000, you can ask the seller to decrease the price by this amount. You can renegotiate for any repair the home inspector finds when completing the home inspection on a house you want to buy.
You can negotiate when buying a house in many ways, and your real estate agent will help you. If you do not have a buyer's agent yet, start looking for one today.