"Best and Final"- Have You Been Hearing This A Lot Lately?

At this time, the market has switched from a buyer's market to a seller's market. A lot of homes here in Los Angeles are getting multiply offers on them and you may be one of the buyers who has put in an offer, and received a counter offer that simply said "best and final". What does that mean? And what should I do with that? Well, first things first.  "Best and Final" is referring to you making your best offer you are willing to make to the seller and there will be no more counter offers after that. The seller will simply choose the most appealing offer from what they receive. And what is most appealing to one seller, may not be the same for the next seller.  So have your agent call the listing agent and ask the question, "What is it your seller is looking for in the offer they will choose?"  This bit of information, if provided will go a long way.  Do they want a short escrow? Do they not want to make any repairs to the house? Do they want a very qualified buyer in terms of a large down payment or perhaps a high fico score? Or maybe, they just want the highest priced offer. There are a lot of ways to make your offer more appealing to the seller, which I will not get into simply because, well....it's not that simple to explain.  But one piece of advice I can leave you with is: If it comes down to the dollar amount, think to yourself, "What is the price I want to pay for this home?" After you have that number, then think to yourself this question, "If I lost this house to a higher bid, at what price would I be telling myself, man...I would have paid that to get this home." Now write down that number, scratch and ignore the first one you had written down, and tell your agent to put the 2nd price you came up with on that offer. If you are up against multiply offers again and again, please remember, you are not alone. And do yourself the favor of finding a good agent, hopefully me, that will know about how to make your offer look as good as it can and get you a home.