I write educational posts on buying your home for the first time. I even posted my homebuying book at r/NewbHomebuyer go check it out

I'm taking this from a higher activity sub and giving my opinion here:

Bait and switch?

Put an offer on a house listed at $345/sqft, ~2300 sqft.

It felt overpriced, so we offered 5% below asking.

On Friday, the seller’s agent said there might be another offer coming in. Nothing came that night.

On Saturday, our agent was told the seller wouldn’t look at offers until Sunday, so submit it then.

Then on Sunday, suddenly it became: the seller is religious and won’t review anything until Monday.

Monday comes, and our offer gets rejected for being too low.

Keep in mind, they were selling the house as-is, wouldn’t repair anything, and wanted a 15-day close.

A week later, the seller drops the price by 2% and asks if we’re still interested. We said no. We were pretty firm on 5% below, especially for an as-is house that clearly needed work.

Another week goes by. They hold an open house, and we stop by. We’re told that over 2 days, only 5 families came through and none were interested.

Then literally 2 hours later, the seller’s agent says there’s a strong competing offer.

We decided to come up a bit and submitted 4% below asking. It was accepted. This happened on a Sunday, by the way. So much for “seller is religious and won’t review offers on Sunday.”

The next morning, I checked Zillow to see if the home had gone pending. That’s when I noticed the square footage had suddenly dropped by more than 500 sqft.

Our agent called to find out what happened, and apparently they had included the garage in the original square footage.

So now the price wasn’t $345/sqft anymore. It was actually around $440/sqft.

That made it the most expensive house on the block, for a house that still needed renovations and tons of work, with a seller who wouldn’t offer any incentives.

We pulled out immediately.

Our agent thinks they inflated the square footage to attract more views, then corrected it once they got nervous the appraisal would expose it.

I know it’s "the same house" but the whole process felt shady and exhausting from start to finish.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

EDIT: They just dropped their price. Competing offer my f***ing a**.

My thoughts

Glad you exited.

I believe seller's agents lie about competing offers, and you have a strong case to suggest that.

Something to do to counter that is to offer an escalation clause in your offer. Like "will beat any competing offers up to $_ with written proof"

So you have a base offer, and a max offer as long as there is proof. That way if you feel like they're lying, you can catch it.

It's a way to not be impulsive, but also not miss out if they're not lying.

The square footage is bad.

I'd have your agent run comparable sales with the new square footage and see how it compares.

Make sure your appraisal contingency is strong. If the value comes in lower you'll want to have an escape route.

Take your due diligence/option period seriously and review if it's still worth it with the correction in square footage.

You can't take anything the seller or agent say seriously now, and have to be careful. If the seller discloses "the house is perfectly fine, no issues" well... you know they're probably lying about that too.

Get an inspector that is extra thorough, and do it quickly so you can negotiate repairs within your due diligence period.

I wouldn't let the seller rush you into a quick closing either.

Sam

I write educational posts on buying your home for the first time. I even posted my homebuying book at r/NewbHomebuyer go check it out

Originally shared by u/SamTMortgageBroker in r/NewbHomebuyer — view the original thread.