What should you do if your offer gets rejected by the seller of the home you wish to purchase?
It is always disappointing when your offer is rejected, especially if there is no counter offer. If the seller doesn’t like what the buyer puts forth for an offer, a typical response would be to counter back. The seller can counter any of the terms that you as the buyer put forth including price, dates, contingencies, etc.. As a buyer, it is somewhat expected that your initial offer will be countered and negotiated until a point of agreement is reached.
If a seller rejects the buyer’s offer completely and does not even respond, it usually means the offer was so far off from what they’ll accept that it’s not even worth their time to respond.
If this happens, the next step is for the buyer to get together with the real estate agent representing them and try to figure out what it is about the offer that they didn’t like. They can talk to the seller’s real estate agent and get a good idea on what the seller didn’t like. Most of the time it comes down to price. If an offer is much lower than the asking price, this is probably the reason the offer was rejected. If it’s not money, it could be a really long closing date or a contingency.
If an offer is rejected, the buyer has two main paths they can take:
- Edit any one of the terms and re-submit back to the seller, which will hopefully start that back and forth negotiation process.
- Communicate to your real estate agent that your terms are your terms, for the seller to think about them, and see if your firm stance can counter the seller’s firm stance. Sometimes the walkaway tactic can be a very strong negotiation tool.
