I would respectfully disagree. Part of being a realtor is reading your buyers and getting the "why" behind the want/need/nope. One of the things I always ask during a first-time meeting, immediately after "what's your budget?" is "are you open to seeing homes slightly over that limit or is this a hard line" with the caveat that I would not show them a home I thought would *sell* for over their budget.
For example, if you have someone with a budget of up to $750k, not showing them the badly priced home at $755k would be a disservice, provided you've discussed this prior to showing them the home.
Yes, this is true and a situation I didn't give much thought too. I took PP's post to mean she was more flexible with her upper limit than she let on to the realtor and then was annoyed at only seeing things within her stated range. If I interpreted incorrectly I apologize.
Yeah, more was mrsjacinthe was saying. We could've communicated more clearly that our "top end" was a suggestion and not a hard line, but it's fine. We bought a house we like and it's all good. I still recommend our realtor to everyone I know!
I don't think the broker meant your agent. He probably meant the seller's agent. This happens in situations where there are counter offers. So, house is listed at 400k, you offer 380k and show a pre-approval letter of 410k. The seller's agent may encourage the seller to counter at a higher price because they know you are pre-approved for a higher amount. In every case where we have offered on a house, we have had the broker change the pre-approval letter to match exactly what our offer is, in this case, 380k.
I hope that makes sense. Again, my concern would not be with your own realtor, but with that of sellers and seller's agents.
When we bought we told our realtor what we wanted to spend, she showed us houses in that price range. After we didn't like any she asked if she could show us a house that was over our price range but it was on the market for 8-9 months. We got the place in our price range in the end.
In my experience...yes it can happen. Also if a buyer's agent sees you are approved for more than your offer & there are multiple offers, I think that can play in on a bidding war.
Our agent didn't upsell us. However, when we made an offer on a home significantly less than the amount we were pre-approved for she had us go back to our broker and get a new letter stating we were only approved for what our offer was so that it wouldn't hurt our negotiation. She said she didn't want the sellers/sellers agent to see how much wiggle room we truly had.
I don't see how it would make a difference, really. Unless it's a super hot sellers market most people aren't going to pay over appraised value, no matter how much they're pre-approved for. Especially if it's a low or no down payment situation.
Our agent didn't upsell us. However, when we made an offer on a home significantly less than the amount we were pre-approved for she had us go back to our broker and get a new letter stating we were only approved for what our offer was so that it wouldn't hurt our negotiation. She said she didn't want the sellers/sellers agent to see how much wiggle room we truly had.
I don't see how it would make a difference, really. Unless it's a super hot sellers market most people aren't going to pay over appraised value, no matter how much they're pre-approved for. Especially if it's a low or no down payment situation.
We're under contract in a super hot sellers market. We offered over listing but still $25k less than our preapproved. Our agent said it was our decision to get the letter revised or not- in our market, the higher amount can prompt a bidding war, but it could also show the sellers that you are more likely not to have financing problems because you were approved for more. We kept the higher amount in and got picked against many other over list offers So either the preapproval amount made no difference, or a positive difference in our case. Our agent definitely respected what we wanted to spend too- if she tried to get us interested in more expensive houses we would have found someone else.
Post by DotAndBuzz on Apr 12, 2017 12:01:36 GMT -5
Our realtor knew our pre-approval number, and our max budget purchase number. We did look at houses that were priced over budget, but before he showed them to us, he told us that it would be reasonable to make an offer on them within our price range. In other words, he thought they were overpriced. We actually ended up buying one that started well over budget in asking price, came WAY down in contract negotiations by the time we were ready to close - almost 10% off of asking price - which kept it well within our budget.
We didn't adjust our letter when we submitted our offer.