Is there anything I can do to guarantee that I can purchase a foreclosure around the asking price? I will be paying cash. Does this help?

-mspac

There is absolutely no way to guarantee anything at all when it comes to negotiations on a home – it is always a back and forth process. However, your best bet when it comes to getting a foreclosure property at/around the list price is to act fast.

Foreclosures tend to get exponentially more difficult to purchase if there’s more than one potential buyer involved in the negotiations. Get your offer in quickly, for full price, and cash with a quick closing (i.e. don’t give the bank any reason to not accept your offer quickly) and hope that the bank gives you an acceptance before another buyer has a chance to get their foot in the door. As soon as another buyer is involved, the bank will usually send out a call for highest and best, at which point you are now in competition for the home (this is not the position you want to be in).

If you come in below the list price, chances are the bank will issue a counter-offer (which will usually take 2-3 days to get from them). Then, it’s another 2-3 before they respond to your response to their counter offer. You don’t want this to happen because it can drag out the negotiations for up to a week or more, during which time another buyer can step in and make an offer as well.

Act fast and make it easy for the bank to say “yes” without making any counter-offers, and hope that they act quickly on their end as well. Hopefully you can get the property under contract before anyone else has a chance to make a move. In my experience, this is the best way to avoid a multiple-offers scenario which almost always results in someone paying above the list price on the property.

Joshua Hanoud is a REALTOR® for Tropic Shores Realty and specializes in providing a higher level of service to golf course, waterfront, and estate home buyers and sellers in Hernando County and the surrounding Nature Coast area of West Central Florida.