Competitive Orange County Real Estate Market - How To Come Out On Top

How to Win Against Multiple Home Offers?

Part 1

The most obvious way to win the dream home that you and your family have been diligently looking for is to come in with the highest offer – but even though you come in with the best offer, it could be 10% higher than the next best offer might not be enough if your offer is not a “clean offer”. A clean offer is highly attractive to a seller and this simply means that there are no or very few contingencies (conditions) that must be satisfied in order for the sale to go through or reach a satisfactory conclusion.

The Orange County housing market statistics show that most typical type of contingencies that appear in a purchase offer are financing, home inspections and the worst (in the eyes of the seller) the sale of another home. If you want to put yourself ahead of a very competitive Orange County buyers market you must come into the buying process with zero contingencies – save for the home inspection that would take place after the seller accepted your initial offer. If you still have a home to sell or if you have not secured financing for the new home, you have jumped into the process to early and are not a competitive bidder and should not expect to come in with the best offer as likely your competition has already taken care of these important items.

In part 2 of this blog posting I will talk about down payment and earnest deposit and how they can help stimulate the offer IF you are already pre-approved for financing AND do not have a home that you need to sell in a contingency offer. 

Greg Steinaker

C.E.O. BanCorp Realty