Signs it's too late to renegotiate offer

Q: My fiancé found us a home and the sellers wanted $149,900 (if memory serves me correctly). He haggled them down to $145,000 and asked for the seller to pay 6 percent closing costs, but they would agree to only a 3 percent closing-cost credit. We've had the inspection and everything has checked out. But now my fiancé is feeling as though he should have offered less than $145,000. My question to you is: Is it too late to renegotiate? We're new to this whole process of homebuying.

A: There are really two questions at issue here: Is it possible to renegotiate? And is it sensible to try to renegotiate? Whether or not it is possible, my advice is to manage your (and your fiancé's) understandable, mild panic and fear that you might not have cut the absolute best deal possible without disrupting the entire transaction by trying to get a price reduction at this late date.

Understand that it's virtually never possible for any buyer to know exactly how low it may have been possible to negotiate the price for any given home, because it's a hypothetical, "what if" scenario. If you've negotiated a deal that you can afford, on a house that you both like and is in acceptable condition, you have a lot to be grateful for.

Mindset Management

It sounds to me like you two are dealing with a simple case of buyer's remorse. During the challenge of the house hunt and the heat of negotiations, even through inspections, there's an element of emotional intensity and a sense of urgency that propels buyers to show up and do what they need to do to further their homebuying goals.

Once all of this busyness is done, though, there is an anticlimactic, dramatic slowdown in activity as the close of escrow looms. Often, this is when buyer's remorse starts to creep in. Some buyers start to nitpick at the property itself, or regret their decision to buy at all. Others, like perhaps your fiancé, tend to second-guess the deal they struck and itch to have a crack at a "do-over."

Since we're on the topic of managing your thoughts on this matter, I have to take a moment and point out the Golden Rule at this juncture, which, if followed, would prevent probably tens of thousands of lawsuits and broken transactions every year.

Do you really think it's even fair to sign a contract agreeing to one price and set of terms, have the seller take the place off the market and forgo other (potentially better) offers in reliance on your word that you're in earnest about buying it as agreed, and then say, "Eh, I changed my mind?" How would you feel if the seller said, "Yeah, sorry -- we got a better offer, so we've changed our minds?"

My guess: You wouldn't like it. And you know what they say about karma. My advice is not to let your buyer's remorse cause you to start a sequence of reactions that you might not like in the end.

Whatever lessons your fiancé feels he has learned during this process that would cause him to have bargained harder or held out for a lower price, in retrospect, are not lost if he doesn't renegotiate; he can apply them the next time you buy a house (or a car, or any other big-ticket, haggle-worthy item). ...CONTINUED

All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.