Make an Offer

Yay! You’ve found the perfect home and want to put in an offer. Before we can put an offer in on a home, there are a few things we need you to email to us:

Full legal name: Please email us the full legal name of anyone who will be on the contract as well as their phone number and email address. The legal name has to match your driver’s license. You will show your driver’s license or passport at closing and this name needs to match what is on the contract.

Initial offer price: What initial price do you want to offer for the home? Let’s have a discussion about the sale to list price in the neighborhood. This will tell you a lot about whether you should expect to pay below asking price, asking price, or above asking price based on today’s market. We will also email you comps to review and give you an opinion as to what the home is worth.

Your walk away price: Don’t expect to pay your initial offer price as it’s extremely rare for a seller to accept your initial offer without some negotiating back and forth. That’s why it’s called an initial offer. In addition to deciding what offer you want to put in to start, you need to decide now how much you’re willing to pay for this property and what your walk away price is before things get heated and emotional.

Closing date: Typically in today's market, closing takes place around 30-45 days from contract acceptance. Closings can only take place Mon – Fri; they cannot take place on weekends or bank holidays when the banks are closed.

Sometimes you can ask for a longer closing date (60 – 90 days) depending on the seller’s needs.

Therefore, if you want to move around July 1, plan on putting in offers May 10 – 15. While some local lenders can do closings faster (usually 21 days is the fastest a closing can be done with a mortgage), most lenders can’t close that fast and need 30 – 45 days. If you want to close faster than 30 days please let me know as we’ll need to direct you to certain lenders who are capable of closing quickly.

If you’re not getting a loan and are paying 100% cash you can close as quickly as 7 days.

Closings can take place anytime from 9am – 4pm and usually take 1 hour. If you cannot attend closing, we need to know that 2-3 weeks in advance so we can ask the lender to approve a Power of Attorney so a family member or your attorney can sign the documents on your behalf.

Earnest money: How much earnest money are you comfortable putting down on this property? Typically, contracts in Northern Utah ask for 1% of the purchase price for earnest money. The earnest money should be delivered to the Title Company within 4 business days after you and the sellers have signed the contract. This money is refundable if you do the inspection and decide to walk away from the contract within your due diligence period.

The earnest money is part of your down payment. Therefore, if you’re planning to pay $10,000 for a down payment and you’re paying $2,000 in total earnest money then at closing you would owe an additional $8,000 for the remainder of the down payment. Please discuss this in further detail with your Lender.

Down payment: For the contract, we need to know how much money you’re going to bring to closing for your down payment.

Closing cost credits: Do you want to ask the sellers to pay any of your closing costs? Generally the sellers pay their closing costs and the buyers pay their own closings costs. However, we can ask the sellers to pay some of your closing costs on top of theirs, if needed.

Home warranty: Do you want to ask the seller to provide a home warranty on the property? If the property doesn’t have multiple offers, we always recommend asking the seller to provide you with a one year home warranty. Depending on the type of property you’re buying, this usually costs the sellers between $500 – $800. Here's more information about a Home Warranty.

Contingencies: Any other contingencies we need to be aware of? Do you need to sell your current home before we can buy this home?

Once we’ve discussed your offer and answered all questions then we’ll write the contract and have you sign. Either in person with a pen or electronically via a program called DigiSign.

Click here to watch a video on signing documents electronically with Digisign

We’ll then submit the offer to the seller’s agent. While negotiations sometimes go quickly, be prepared that it often takes 1-3 days to negotiate the purchase price and terms of the contract. Every seller is different and some people can make decisions quickly whereas others need time to think things through. Patience is the name of the game once an offer has been submitted as we don’t want to look too eager as it weakens our negotiating position!