No offense in Hello from Open Diary

When I moved, there were two houses on the market that I really liked. House #1 was priced $30k higher than house #2. It had an amazing kitchen and is really close to where I work, but I wasn’t willing to pay $30k more for those features. Still, I liked it better than house #2, so I decided to make an offer. It had been on the market for over a year, so I figured that (a) it was overpriced, and (b) the sellers might be desperate enough the sell that they would consider a lowball offer.

I asked my dad and brother, who are both lawyers, for advice. My dad is a master negotiator, but doesn’t know much about real estate. My brother is also a skilled negotiator and is a bit more attuned to the real estate market. Anyway, my dad encouraged me to make a really low offer, since that would be my starting point; if I started by offering the maximum I was willing to pay, the sellers would probably make a counter-offer higher than that. So I offered $25k less than the asking price. The sellers made a counter-offer $20k higher than my offer, so I raised my offer by $5k ($20k less than the asking price), and they rejected it without making another counter-offer. My brother hypothesized that they were unwilling to take anything less than that because they paid for the improvements (i.e., kitchen upgrade) with a home equity loan and therefore owed more on the house than I was offering.

My realtor later told me that the sellers were highly insulted by my offer, to the point that they almost decided not to make a counter-offer at all. As luck would have it, one of the sellers works at my company in a position of fairly high authority. I’m dreading the day when I have to deal with him and he recognizes my name as that bitch who made him an insulting offer on his house.

The thing is, I don’t understand the concept of being insulted by an offer. It’s not personal. I didn’t say that I didn’t like his house – I wouldn’t have made an offer if I hadn’t liked it. I just wasn’t willing to pay what he was asking for it. I am trying to sell my house, and if someone makes an offer of $25k less than my asking price, I will not accept it, but I also won’t feel insulted by it (and keep in mind that I am asking $17k less than what I paid for it, while the sellers of house #1 were asking $18k more than what they paid).

When I found out the names of the sellers, I looked up their current address and found that they bought a house in the same city, just a few miles away, that cost twice what they were asking for their house (and they paid $25k less for it than the asking price). Now, I understand that people get attached to their houses, but clearly, they were not that attached if they decided it wasn’t good enough for them anymore and moved elsewhere in the same city. Meanwhile, the only reason I’m selling my house is because I moved for a new job, and if I were staying in the city where my house is, I would have stayed there for a long time. In other words, I am arguably more attached to my house than they are to theirs.

I have now made an offer on house #2 and I am waiting to hear from the sellers. My brother advised me to offer $13k less than the asking price, reasoning that they paid $43k less than the asking price, so even if they had taken a home equity loan, my offer would still more than pay for what they could possibly owe on the house. My realtor cringed when I told her what I was offering, so I raised my offer by $3k, so it’s just $10k less than what they’re asking (although they have reduced the price twice since it’s been on the market, so it’s $19k less than their original price). I hope they’re not too offended by that, but shit, people are sensitive about their houses!