Continuing my series on how best to navigate a multiple offer situation in San Francisco and all the possible scenarios, let’s take that first scenario, tweak it, and see what happens.

To refresh, here’s the situation: We have a Single Family Home. It is priced “aggressively” at $1,595,000 and is in a great location. We are on the buy side. Recent comparables and the level of interest in this home clearly point to it selling significantly above asking price. The listing side has told us they expect around 5-10 offers, and they have handed out 25 disclosure packages. The disclosure package includes ALL seller disclosures. It covers pest/contractor, roof, sewer lateral, and Underground Storage Tank inspections, a geologist report, and I forget to mention before it essentially has EVERYTHING required as far as inspections and disclosures for a complete transaction file. The property appears “clean” with no red flags.

In the first scenario, our buyer decided to take the advice of their family and out of town Realtor and submit an offer $95,000 under asking, with multiple contingencies. There were 12 offers, ours was essentially laughed at.

So how can you make it better?

Scenario 2

In this situation, and in most in San Francisco, the seller has provided us everything we would likely do on our buy side investigations anyway. Sure, you can always do your own and maybe uncover some minor additional items, but you sometimes have to throw a little caution to the wind to win in SF. So get rid of the inspection contingency, or do your own inspections prior to writing an offer. Get rid of the appraisal contingency (I’ve never once seen a property not appraise “at value” in a multiple offer situation, and if there are 12 buyers who want that house, it’s definitely worth it…the appraiser is IMHO not even needed.) Get rid of the loan contingency. Your lender has told you without a shadow of a doubt you are “golden” and will certainly qualify for the loan on this home. Trust. And since you’ve reviewed the disclosure package in detail, have no questions or concerns, we’ll go ahead and get your signatures and initials in the entire disclosure package and include that with our offer.

Now we have a contingency free offer…but you still want to try to get lucky and get it for less than asking, because you still don’t understand just how nutty our market can be, and your parents, and that annoying out of town realtor are still in your ear. So our offer now is $1,500,000 on a $1,595,000 home, with 5-10 offers expected, in a great location. How will it likely pan out…

You lose again. BUT! Because we came in without any contingencies and a “clean” offer, instead of simply getting kicked to the curb as in the first scenario, there is a Scenario 3 I’ll get to in my next post…

Make sure to follow us here, or on the Socials (@theFrontSteps) to see what else can happen in this situation on both the buyer and seller sides.

–Navigating Multiple Offers in San Francisco Real Estate | Scenario 1 [theFrontSteps]

–Track Overbids, Underbids, and Everything in between [The Goods]