When presenting your buyer’s offer on a home to the listing agent, sending it as a regular old email attachment isn’t going to cut it. Here’s what you should be doing.

Today we’ll focus our attention on the best way you, as a buyer’s agent, can present your offer to a listing agent. 

All too often, my team and I are on the receiving end of offers that just come to our inbox as an attachment with no explanation or description about the buyer whatsoever. 

Nowadays, technology dominates our industry, and because of this, it feels like we’ve gotten away from the advisory or human element of the real estate transaction. I encourage my fellow agents to work toward getting back to that.

“Coming to a meeting of minds and needs between the buyer and seller likely means a win for your buyer at the settlement table.”

Technology has a pivotal role in our industry in that it automates the tasks we’d rather not do, and it can do them better. In this respect, it’s become indispensable to some extent. However, it can’t automate the learning, understanding, and empathizing that takes place between people and that gives a real estate professional the ability to advise based upon need. 

Here’s my advice to agents working to construct an offer: Pick up the phone and call the listing agent. This way, you’ll gain valuable insight into that agent and the seller they’re representing. During the conversation, get a sense of the seller’s preferences and what’s most important to them in their home sale. 

With the knowledge of what’s important to your buyer and the seller, you’ll be able to fine-tune an offer that has a high probability of being a win-win scenario. After all, coming to a meeting of minds and needs between the buyer and seller likely means a win for your buyer at the settlement table.  

Just to recap: The first step is to gather information about the seller and what’s most important to them, the second step is to construct a solution-based offer that addresses everyone’s needs, and the final step is to present the product to the listing agent.   

As a bonus tip, elect to present your offer to the listing agent, at a minimum, so you can articulate your buyer’s situation and why they chose to include certain points. There’s nothing more frustrating for you and your buyer than to come up short on a property due to miscommunication.    

Before finishing the call, find out if they have any other questions, if there’s anything missing, or if the listing agent believes there’s something important that should be included. 

Those are the steps we encourage you to perform when building an offer. If you have any other steps that you’d advise or helpful information you’d like to share, please reach out to us. We’ll talk to you soon!