Own Your Own Process First
What do most Buyers facing a multiple-offer situation on a house really want to know? Simple: “What’s the least possible amount I can offer and still stand a snowball’s chance of getting the home?”
Some of the rationale in their heads sounds like this: “ I don’t want to pay any more than I have to. I know I can’t offer too little or I’ll get creamed. But if I offer too much, how will I ever know? What if the Seller accepts my offer right away – won’t that mean I overpaid? Where’s the Goldilocks Zone? The price that’s not too high or too low, but is just right? What gets my foot in the door? If there are ten offers – how do I decide what to offer in order to make the first cut and receive a multiple-counter offer?”
And we’ll get to all of that, I promise. First, I have a question. This is going to sound like another one of Brezsny’s infinite digressions of course, but It’s not. It’s actually the exact right starting point for anyone out there who is about to enter into the multiple-offer fray and has too much monkey-mind chatter going on inside to really concentrate.
The question is: How much do you want it? Is this a home that you have to have? One that you’ll be crushed if you don’t get it? Or one you can take or leave? One that kinda works but isn’t perfect? One you can settle for? Something you can move on from? Walk away from in one whole emotional piece?
If you don’t know the answer then you’re not going to negotiate the no-man’s land of multiple-offers very well. In fact, you stand a very good chance of either sabotaging your own best attempts to get something you really want or worse. Of going way out on a limb to get something you really didn’t want after all, but only realize when it’s too late.
If you aren’t sure what you want and what it means and how it fts with the rest of your life and future…. and you can’t anchor your decision-making to a solid, non-negotiable sense of home that lies somewhere deep down, in and around the central core of your being, then, you are already drifting in space.
And sleep-walking in place, through all of those open houses and search engine e mails and newspaper ads of magical,, blue sky thinking. You have left yourself vulnerable to the auction-like, adrenaline-fueled, altered-state of realty that comes in the heat of a multiple-offer moment. A flood of fears. A slew of whims and desires. The opium of consumer-driven fantasies we’ve all been inculcated with since birth.
This is your homework between now and whenever it is that you find the right place that you think you want to try to put an offer in on. (Or at least until next week’s column.) Forget about that latest greatest new listing for a minute. Step back and do a little more soul-searching.
You have to own your own process before you can expect to own a real-life version of your own home. It’s not out there. Home is here. Think of it as a pre-qualifying process that supersedes any pre-qualifying you’ll do with the bank. Pre-qualifying what quality of life really means to you when you are home alone with yourself.
In the meantime…stay thirsty my friends.
