Reaching Final Agreement
Your First Home: The Proven Path to Home Ownership
A Keller Williams ® Realty Guide
By Gary Keller with Dave Jenks and Jay Papasan
Once you’ve decided what you need to have fixed in order to make the purchase, your agent will convey your requests to the sellers. We want you to remember your options include asking the seller to make repairs or asking for compensation (either through reducing the sales price or through cash repair allowance) so you can make them yourself. And, if there isn’t much wrong with the home, the simplest option is to move forward with the original contract without asking the sellers to fix anything.
Once you get to the point to negotiating repairs, everyone is usually a little tense. You’re so close to having a deal! Still, all the emotions and excitement you and the seller feel can needlessly blow relatively minor issues-such as who will pay for the new $300 water heater in your $200,000 home-out of proportion. This is dangerous because the seller could reject your counter and kill the deal if it starts to seem like it will be easier to find another buyer than to find agreement. Good negotiating, then, means having a clear understanding of where you’re willing to give as well as what matters most and communicating those priorities to the sellers. If negotiations prove difficult, you could decide you love the home enough to buy it, flaws and all. As a very last resort, the inspection contingency will let you walk away.
There’s a good chance you and the seller eventually will reach agreement. At that point, you’ll have a finalized contract and a home owner’s insurance policy (or at least you’ll be well on your way to getting one). These two steps are probably the last big hurdles you’ll have to face. We’ve finally arrived at an exciting moment: the time it becomes fairly certain that this home really will be yours. The last few steps between here and closing, which include a survey, title work, and appraisal, are handled primarily by your agent and lender and are explained in the next chapter.
