Feb. 3, 2006: Strategy and timing are everything in making a purchase offer on your dream home
I believe in a monolithic kind of purposefulness. If I don't have a good reason for doing or saying something, I simply won't do it. If I am observed to have done or said something, you better believe I can tell you exactly why.
So when I say that there is an absolute strategic best time to make an offer to purchase a home, you can be sure I have good arguments to back up that claim.
Not that it makes any difference. Because if there is an absolute best time to write an offer, there is also an absolute worst time. Seven times out of 10, we're going to write the offer at the worst possible time.
It's baked in the cake: Strategy is purpose without passion. Home buyers are sometimes so passionately in love with their home-to-be that every practical purpose is forgotten.
What's the worst time to make an offer on a house? Friday or Saturday evening - precisely when most offers are written.
If you offer less than full price, the sellers will counter, hoping to keep you on the hook while they see what the weekend brings. Even if you make a full-price offer, they may delay all weekend, hoping that an even better offer will come in.
So what is the absolute strategic best time to write a purchase offer? I think it's early in the day on the first Tuesday of the month.
We want the first of the month because the seller just wrote another mortgage check and wants to know when the pain is going to stop. We want Tuesday morning because, by then, the seller will know that no offer is coming in from the weekend's showings. We are catching the sellers at the exact moment their resistance is at its weakest.
Expressed this baldly, this may sound cold - but this is strategy, not passion. You can't do this at all unless you can abide not getting the home.
But by making the right offer at the right time, you can save yourself thousands of dollars.
Greg Swann is the designated broker for BloodhoundRealty.com, a full-service Metropolitan Phoenix real estate brokerage. This article originally appeared in the West Valley regional sections of the Arizona Republic.
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