Waiting For Your Home Offer To Purchase Gets Accepted

Over the weekend, I showed a home that my buyers absolutely loved.  This was their Whitney Houston moment if there ever was one.  After a longer journey, this home for sale in Fox Park was just the one for them.  After we left the house, we discussed a purchase strategy that would make sense both for the buyers and the sellers.  We knew we needed a competitive offer, but at the same time, there could be other bidders.  This is one of those areas where a very experienced buyer’s agent can help.  When a real estate agent is active in the marketplace, they tend to have a sense of what sort of offer will get the property under contract.  It’s definitely an art more than it is a science.  At 7 p.m. we put a well crafted offer in and then we waited.  The contract acceptance deadline was for 7 p.m. the next day.

Waiting For Offer News From The Seller

My buyers really wanted this house.  I knew it.  They knew it.  When you have buyers that want a house badly, it can be so tempting to lose track of comparable sales to get a good asking price.  The wait for a real estate agent who cares about their clients is absolutely excruciating.  You are going to be the person who tells them that their offer was accepted, or, the sellers chose a different offer.  In some ways, that’s better than not having any information at all, and that’s where we were for 24 hours.  If you are in a situation where you are waiting for news, here are a few tips to try and get through it.

Good Things To Do

1. Go to a movie. That will give you at least 3 hours where you don’t have to think about the offer.

 

2. Turn your phone notifications off. For this 24 hour period, I found myself checking my phone every 3 minutes it seemed.  When the seller agent knows something, they will call, text, or email, but it’s probably not going to be until the end.  Better to just get away from the trappings of the phone.

 

3. Go to a restaurant. You might be so nervous about your offer that you aren’t hungry.  That’s OK, go for the drinks!  Just getting out and seeing others might help with the stress.

 

4. Work outside in your yard. I spent the entire day in the yard.  When you are working hard, pulling weeds, cutting the grass, etc. That can free your mind from thinking about the offer.

 

5. Get in touch with old friends. If you must be on your phone, why not look up someone you haven’t talked to in a while?  Life moves at different speeds for everyone, one of your friends just might be in the situation you are in.

Bad Thing To Do

1. Checking your phone and email every 5 minutes. I did this…it was bad…it didn’t help with the purchase of the house and it wasted a lot of time.

 

2. Calling your real estate agent. If your real estate agent had any news, I guarantee they would call you!  They might be out showing other property for sale, or in my case, I was working two other offers at the same time…that’s three times the stress.

 

3. Watch home improvement shows. Everything you watch or see will remind you of your offer to purchase that home.  Watching shows related to real estate is just going to make it worse.

 

4. Drive by the property. There’s nothing you can gain by driving by the house you just put an offer on between the time the offer was submitted and their response.  Even if you see 100 people walk through the house, you have no idea who is putting in an offer and who isn’t.  Driving by the house is just going to remind you that you have an offer on it…and you don’t know if the other side will respond with a counter or reject your offer in favor of someone else.

 

5. Tell your friends you made an offer. As much as you might want to tell your friends you have an offer in on a house, you might not get the house.  After that disappointment, you will then have friends calling and asking “Did you get it?” over and over….which is going to make you miserable.

Ways To Think About Your Potential Home Purchase

1. Look at this time as a blessing. The excitement of putting an offer in on the home of your dreams is amazing.  Consider it a blessing that you have the money to make the offer at all.

 

2. Realize that you can always buy a different house. While I know that you have your heart set on this particular home, you might be surprised to know that there will be others.  Anchoring yourself to a home you might not get is really hard on the psyche.  Try to avoid it.

 

3. Don’t try to handicap odds of a contract acceptance or rejection. When you have your offer to purchase a home turned in, there’s nothing more you can do other than wait it out.  You are ultimately not in control of the seller or their real estate agent.  If it works out, that’s great!  If it doesn’t, you are going to have to pick yourself back up and look for another.

You will go through a range of emotions when you actually write an offer to purchase a home.  Keeping your emotions in check is going to be tough.  As hard as it is, try to be positive.  If things don’t work out, it just wasn’t meant to be.   There’s always another house.