Do You Accept a "First Offer"?

Usually I am quite a fan of Jeffrey Fox's writing. Yeah, there is about 15-20% of his stuff is questionable, but this advice is so dead wrong I actually threw out the book, it is that bad.

His advice?

"Don't Immediately Take the First Offer."

Here's a quote from his book, "How to Get to the Top" and I'll tell you what is wrong with it.

"If you are selling a building for $200,000, and the buyer offers $180,000, make a counter at, say, $192,000, even if you would jump at the original offer. If you accept the $180,000 and don't counter, the buyer will think that he or she should have offered $170,000."

There are just so many things wrong with this advice, allow me to break them down in simple terms.

1) If you want to sell something and an offer comes in within the "range' that you want to sell it you do. No need to counter, because countering can cause issues with the transaction, stress, and a fallen through deal.

2) If the seller thinks they could have acquired the building for $170,000 who cares? They are commited to buying the property for the amount agreed. This is a "non-issue" in my book.

3) My grandfather, Golden K. Driggs, thought countering is often childish, and if countering is needed, neither party is really worth dealing with.

Here is my issue with countering. It is often done in a very childish manner. The person countering is basically trying to do one thing and one thing only, to "win". And what often times happens is, they lose.

I'll give you an example. When we made an offer on the house in North Carolina where we presently live, we offered MORE than what the sellers wanted. Our real estate agents thought we were crazy, "No, you don't know how this works, you should offer at least $30,000 less."

My response?

It was pretty simple. This was the 42nd house we had seen. Our flight was leaving tomorrow. I didn't want to look at another house, this was the one we wanted - hands down. I didn't want the stress of flying back home wondering if they were going to accept the offer. I hate stress.

The result?

The offer was accepted immediately and the sellers were so happy how easy the transaction was they ended up leaving a lot of furniture in the house which helped the "move in" that much easier and stress free.

Bonus Gossip

I learned several months later that a couple had seen the house a few days before and was getting ready to put an offer on the house for $10,000 below the asking price. Had we come in lower, the sellers may have countered themselves, or they may have rejected it outright due to the new offer.

If you know what you want - get it. Be a Rainmaker.