Hello everyone and Welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in the upstate of South Carolina in the Greenville greater Greenville area I am your host Stan McCune realtor right here in the upstate of South Carolina you can reach me via my contact information in the show notes at any time I can help you or your friends with any of your real estate or their real estate needs and just a reminder if you have not given this show a rating or a review please do that please make sure that you subscribe make sure that you download episodes as well if you've got space on your device I would appreciate that that helps the show and yeah anything that you can do to help the show in those ways I would greatly appreciate that today we're going to be talking about winning the bidding war guess what what there are bidding wars all over the place pretty much every offer I'm submitting right now for my buyer clients has a bidding war tied to it I I not all of them but any home that is like new to the market pretty much has some sort of multiple offer type of situation and that's at every price point up to I've shown up to a million dollars recently that home had a bidding war on it there is no price point that is exempt from bidding wars right now and we've talked about that in the past so I'm not going to get into the Weeds on why that's the case but I want to talk about not just looking at the market and saying okay the Market's crazy sorry but what can we do about it because I represent a lot of buyer clients I have more buyer clients in the pipeline some that are are moving here from out of state whatever the case may be and we need to have Strate IES in place we need to all be on the same page with how to win the bidding war because these bidding wars they're not going away and and I'll mention this that bidding wars aren't new okay I bought my first house in 2011 that was like the kind of the bottom of the housing market in the in the Greenville area and even at that time there were bidding wars that were happening even from 2008 to 2011 we would still see bidding wars when when homes came on the market in good neighborhoods at competitive prices people were still jumping on them even though there were other homes that were that were languishing for 10 11 12 months or more there would still be bidding wars on on good homes at competitive prices in in good areas and so bidding wars are here to stay like that's never going to change even during a a buyers Market there are still bidding wars so we need to to prepare for them and we need to think about about how we can win them and I've talked a little bit about this in other podcasts this is going to overlap with a few other podcasts it's going to overlap with for instance episode 26 when I talked about the kind of the weird aspects of the South Carolina Association realtor contract form that most transactions in Greenville are done on we're going to have some overlap with that but I'm going to try not to over too much that we just kind of talked about the idiosyncrasies of the contract this one I'm going to be talking about how we can manipulate those idiosyncrasies in order to help you to win in a bidding war type of situation in a multiple offer type of situation and I guess I should clarify because sometimes there's realtor speech out there and and I think probably 75% maybe more of people know what I mean when I say bidding war or mult offer situation but I want to clarify because I had someone like say recently bidding war is this an auction okay bidding war that is realtor speak and it it you know you'll hear this on HGTV and whatnot as well so it's become more mainstream but the idea of a bidding war is basically when a home comes on the market and a bunch of people put offers in in at the same time it's not an auction but it almost plays out like an auction and often times what ends up happening is the seller the listing agent will end up saying okay we are going to accept highest and best offer by this time period And so it's not like an auction like if you go to the the the Greenville County foreclosure auction and you're making verbal bids it's more like a silent auction where everyone is kind of secretly putting in their bids and then the seller decides at the end what they're going to accept so that is what we're talking about when we're talking about a multiple offer situation or a bidding war now in in some cases they won't ask for highest and best and you just need to lead with your highest and best right away that's usually what I recommend to my clients anyway and there are some ways to to do that that protect you which we're going to talk about here in a second but when you're crafting your offer obviously the price that you put on there is a big part of the strength of your offer but that's not the only thing there there's really three components to an offer that is most important to the seller and you could maybe add a fourth in there but the main three components are price earnest money and contingencies now the fourth component that you could add in there is the closing date that is kind of it that's kind of far beneath all the other ones and so I'm just going to kind of gloss right over that but if you have have a competitive a a quick closing date for a seller for instance let's say it's a it's a nonoccupied home it's a vacant home and you can close on that home in two to three weeks and and there by the way if you're getting financing you can still it's it's a little stressful but you can close within 3 weeks if you have a good lender and I can recommend good lenders if it's a cash deal I mean you can close in I I'd probably say 10 days I mean technically you could probably get an attorney to do it quicker than that but if you're buying cash you can close in as quickly as 10 days so that is something that can be helpful now for people that are living in the home they might not want it to be that quick that's something I usually discuss with the listing agent is hey we're flexibil if we have flexibility on the closing date I'll say hey we're flexible when it comes to that closing date what would your clients most want and what I hear most of the time is that they're like hey you know 4 weeks 30 days you know that's that's fine and that's kind of our standard contract period here in Greenville is roughly 30 to to 45 days once it gets to 45 days it starts to feel really long so so I want to try to keep that to ideally no more than 30 to keep the offer looking attractive but again that one is far beneath all the others really you you just don't want that to be too long you don't want your closing date to be way out there then it makes your offer look look weird and unattractive because it's like well why would I wait 60 days so as long as you're keeping that within 30 to 40 days your your period that you're under contract until the closing date that most of the time will be kind of a non-issue but these other things the price the earnest money the contingencies all of those things together come combined make up a strong offer or a weak offer depending on what direction you go with it so let let's talk about price price is is obviously the most straightforward out of all of them but it it isn't necessarily straightforward right so let's say that you have a house that's listed for $300,000 and it gets multiple offers on it right now in this market we're frequently seeing offers going 10 15% above what a house is listed for so you might not feel comfortable leading with well I'm I'm just going to offer 330,000 maybe you're willing to go up to $330,000 but you're not willing you don't really want to just start with that offer you do have option another option which we've talked about in the past is to do an escalation Clause the way an escalation Clause would work is you would say I'm offering this amount let's just say 305 I'm offering a little bit more than than what it's listed for but I'm willing to go up to 300,000 $330,000 and basically do a 100 thou man I'm struggling here $1,000 more than the next competing highest net offer up to $330,000 and the the seller then has to bring proof of the next competing highest net offer so let's say that that offer is 325,000 then B basically the the listing agent would have to provide that to me and then we would say okay you're willing to you said that you would go $11,000 more than the next competing offer the next competing offer is 325 that doesn't exceed your maximof 330 so now you're at 326 so then we would just redo the paperwork to say that now you're under contract for 326 now I I've had this question I don't know how many times when I've discussed the escalation Clause way of doing things well how do we know that the listing agent isn't just making up an offer isn't just providing you a fake offer from someone else well we don't the the short answer is we don't there are some aspects to the offer that I can look at that can kind of make me have confidence or not confidence in it as I'm reviewing it but that being said at the end of the day the listing agent could be sneaky and crafty and fabricate an offer but but think about it this way right the listing agent is probably making roughly 3% of the contract price let's say that I figure out that the listing agent fabricated an an offer in order to drive the price up from 3 you know from 305 to 326 that's a $21,000 difference and what is 3% of I'm just doing this on my computer real quick here 3% of $21,000 is $630 so that's and that's before any commission splits that agent has with his or her brokerage so that agent is trying to get another $630 maximokay $630 so it's not much the listing agent isn't getting a whole lot more by doing this crafty scheme of trying to drive up the price but what the listing agent is doing if they get caught okay if they made up an offer in order to drive the price up on the escalation clause and they got caught they would lose their license they would potentially have lawsuits they they would be risking their time in Freedom not out of jail they would be risking their career etc etc and that is not worth it for the majority of Realtors out there okay so I am in full confidence and obviously I'll still review when they send that paperwork over and say well here is the next competing next net offer the highest competing net offer I'll still review that and see if there's anything fishy about it but I've never seen anything fishy in in these situations before and and again it would be unbelievable in my mind it would be shocking if a realtor was willing to risk their career and their livelihood in order to make an extra few hundred most of them are not going to do that the vast majority of them are not going to do that all right so we got all that in the past the escalation Clause is an option for saying okay I'm willing to go up to this amount but that's not where where I'm going to lead with okay now it's worth mentioning that not all agents like the escalation clause and it does muddy the water a little bit let's say that you get multiple offers that have escalation Clauses by the way these were really rare up until the past calendar year and now they're becoming exceedingly common we're seeing them more and more often so if you get multiple offers with escalation causes it gets it gets really tricky for the seller and and it it might I'm not even going to get into the Weeds on that but it might be a situation where it's like well which offer trumps the other and so some listing agents in the past have said I'm not even going to look at these which is honestly illegal they have to present any offer according to the the code that Realtors have agreed to they legally have to present any offers to their seller clients that come AC Ross their table but obviously some of them don't like it for whatever reason I I don't know why I think it perhaps because they're lazy and they don't want to do the extra work but some sellers don't like it as well because it it is extra work extra calculation etc etc so that's something to keep in mind I usually advise my clients hey if we're talking about a big difference if we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars that you're willing to go over list price and and we're not sure you know what the other offers are maybe maybe we know that there's like two other offers and and we're not sure if those other two offers went tens of thousands of dollars above the list price then an escalation cause is a good option if there's like 10 offers on the property it's probably best to avoid the escalation clause and just lead with your best foot forward whatever that number is whatever your top number is whatever whatever you really want that property for to to lead with that so there's a lot of different things to consider there and of course if you guys have any questions let me know for a lot of you that are listening to this I'm sure you've already been through this with me if you're a current or past buyer client of mine all right so that's the price earnest money and contingencies all right let's talk about this earnest money of course is the money that you put forward with your ratified contract that's held by the closing attorney and that goes towards your purch price at the end to you know towards your down payment or towards your closing cost whatever the case may be our standard earnest money deposit in in this area at least is basically 1% of the purchase price so on a $300,000 home that would be $3,000 now the earnest money is basically your good faith you're you're you as a buyer saying hey I have money that I'm willing to to have a third party hold to show that I have skin in the game that I'm invested in purchasing this property but you can get that earnest money back based on the contingencies so so your earnest money and the contingencies are kind of tied at the hip they're connected at the hip here one way that you can improve your offer make your offer more attractive is by offering higher more earnest money higher than 1% % maybe 2% or maybe somewhere in between the two that is obviously going to be eye-catching to the seller most of the offers are going to have closer to to 1% so if you lead with double that it's going to be like oh okay they have more skin in the game but if you have a gazillion ways where you can get out of the contract and get that earnest money back it doesn't really matter you know judges in our area if if you ever have a an earnest dispute judges I've heard frequently side with Buyers also you know it's disadvantageous to a seller to hold up the sale of their home to dispute over earnest money so at the end of the day buyers already have a lot of things working in their favor to get their earnest money back so tightening up the contingencies is an important part of making that earnest money actually mean something and of course your contingencies are the things that allow you to get that earnest money back potentially so there's a financing contingency an appraisal contingency again I'm I'm talking about form 310 South Carolina Association Realtors form 310 this is our standard contract form it has a financing contingency and an appraisal contingency two separate ones it has an inspection contingency that's not really what it's called but but roughly speaking it has that and then a cl00 contingency there are a few other things in there as well that that you could technically count as contingencies but those those are the big ones all right so let's talk about the financing contingency how do we make a financing contingency more attractive well the most attractive way is to not have one but that's only if you are a cash buyer obviously if you are financing the home in any way way you have to have that you have to have that now I did run into a situation recently where it was like we had someone that was buying a home cash and the cash was going to come from the proceeds of their home that they were selling and that home hadn't sold yet and to make the offer as attractive as possible we we didn't have a financing contingency because they were buying it cash but we also didn't have proof of funds because it was based on the home sale contingency and so we we also in order to make the offer really attractive we also didn't put a home sale contingency in there as well and what that meant is that if the offer fell through for basically for any reason like let's say that the let's say that the home that my client was selling did not sell and then they didn't have the cash to buy this next home they would be forfeiting their earnest money and they put forward quite a bit of earnest money so that's kind of a backwards way of doing it which by the way the agent had no idea I had to explain to her so many times what we were doing and she had no idea so some of these things sometimes simple simpler is better and sometimes you have there is a little bit of back and forth with the agent to make sure the agent understands how you're structuring these deals creatively in order to to win these bidding war types of situations so I have to feel this out quite a bit when I'm when I'm negotiating with the agents but obviously cash is King if if you can make a cash offer and very few contingencies that is going to be a very good offer by the way if you're doing an escalation Clause you can and and it's a cash offer one thing that you can do because cash is so much cleaner is say hey this escalation Clause only pertains to other cash offers now the seller may decide that they want to accept a higher financed offer I've seen that happen before where they're just like you know what price is more important to me I'm willing to I'm willing to go ahead and you know accept the financed offer with an appraisal contingency etc etc because I just want more money so so that does happen but often times a lot of sellers like the security of cash versus a financed offer now most people don't have cash so they have to finance it so what then can you do well understand that a higher down payment looks better and in the offer and contract itself it says how much down payment you're you're putting forward we really need to make it to where it's kind of like the lowest down payment you plan to make so maybe you plan to do 10% but you might have to do 5% for a variety of reasons then then we need to put that it's going to be a 5% down payment because otherwise if you change things the seller has to sign off on that we don't want the seller to have to to sign off on that that's my opinion there's different ways of approaching that but I think that that's the best way of doing that in my opinion additionally if you have a better loan that you're doing that looks better as well so a conventional loan is going to look better than you know an FHA loan for instance or a USD loan or a VA loan and and some people prefer for whatever reason there's some people that don't like VA loans VA loans are in my opinion a great program some agents don't like them they've had bad experiences with them and so that that's a consideration as well so the financing contingency you can make it stronger based on what loan you're getting based on what your down payment is often times people are a little bit constricted they don't really have choice es of the matter they're either like hey I can only do FHA and I can only do 3 and a half% down well then it is what it is we just have to we just have to live with that but if you have flexibility if you can put more down if you can opt for a stronger Loan program then that's even better what about the appraisal contingency even though the appraisal and and the financing are also tied to the hip they are two separate contingencies and that's because your financing could fall through for a variety of reasons let's say that person loses their job and it's not due to any fault of their own they get laid off now they can't get financing now they can back out of the contract on the basis of their financing contingency and get their earnest money back but let's say that they can get financing that doomsday scenario doesn't happen but the appraisal comes in low and you have an appraisal contingency now the the buyer has options the buyer can back out on the basis of the low appraisal the buyer can renegotiate with the seller in order to try to get the purchase price down or the buyer can just bring more money to the closing table in order to to bridge the gap between the apprais price and the contract price what's happening now is a lot of in these bidding war situations we're seeing a lot of creative things happening when it comes to the appraisal contingency some people people are waving appraisal contingencies Al together and then some people are are also doing these things where it's like well we can't risk ourselves to entirely waving the appraisal contingency but we're willing to say if the appraisal comes in $10,000 low or $20,000 low will bring that money to the closing table so so how would that work that would work let's say that you've got a you're purchasing a home for $300,000 that's that's what the contract price is and and you're you're bringing 5% down all right let's just say that that's $155,000 that you're bringing down let's say that the home appraises for $290,000 so $10,000 below what you're under contract for that buyer in order to bridge that Gap would have to bring the $110,000 shortfall so they'd have to bring $10,000 to closing and then in addition to that 5% of 290,000 which is 14,500 so then that comes out to 20 $4,500 so you're you're before you were planning to bring $155,000 down now you're having to bring $24,500 down in order to make it work and then you also have closing costs on top of that of course don't forget so there are some ways to make the appraisal contingency more attractive to sellers obviously an offer that doesn't have that contingency is a really strong offer because guess what as prices keep going up and up and up sometimes it can be hard for appraisers to justify it and so we do see some low appraisals I haven't seen any recently thank goodness I have not seen any low appraisals recently but I've seen plenty of them in my career and I'm sure at some point this year I will see a low appraisal it's bound to happen but again if you're in a position where you can wave it then that makes your offer so much stronger because then that's one less thing the seller has to worry about the seller is like oh man I don't see how this home is worth more than 315 but I'm getting offers at 330 340 well if they get an offer for 330 without an appraisal contingency and an offer at 340 with an appraisal contingency they should probably accept the offer at 330 without if I were the listing agent and I'm like hey I can't justify this price I'm looking at the comps it doesn't make sense I'm afraid an appraiser is going to struggle with this take the lower offer the lower offer is going to offer more security it's a it's a burden in hand type of thing rather than rolling the dice and then running into and running into trouble later the issue with waving the appraisal contingency of course is that if it comes in low and you don't have enough money to make that up now you're now you're in trouble you know you can plead with the seller hey please come down on the price but the seller doesn't have to and they're probably not going to probably just going to go back to one of the other offers that they had and say hey are you still in the market this one is coming back up for sale and then at that point because you waved that contingency now you're giving up your earnest money you're forfeiting your earnest money because the appraisal came in low and so I usually only recommend waving it in two instances one is when you as a buyer you have more than adequate cash to make up what whatever difference we anticipate that there might be between the appraisal and the contract price and that's something that I look at I look at the comps and I analyze all of that and I kind of come up with you know a worst case scenario of like okay here's here's in the worst case what I what I think will happen as far as the appraisal coming in low if you if you as a buyer have plenty of cash to make that up no big deal no big deal we can wave the appraisal contingency if you're comfortable with that the other one is just and and this is a little bit more rare but we have this happen sometimes if if the buyer doesn't have as much money maybe it has just a little bit of money to make up a small shortfall in the appraisal but we're just very confident that it's going to appraise at or very close to the contract price Mo understand most appraisers they don't want to get the blowback of an appraisal coming coming in low they don't they don't want that they know they're going to get called immediately probably by both agents they know that that people are going to be angry that they're going to be asking for revisions that all sorts of things are going to come into play so a lot of appraisers they're really incentivized to to make their appraisal at the contract price and so if we have the data to justify it if we have good comps that are like okay yes this almost certainly will appraise at the contract price and if it doesn't it should be very close to it and you have enough money to make it up if it's close to it there you go that's a good opportunity to wave it otherwise your best bet is either to keep the appraisal contingency which is just going to make your offer lower or say hey we're willing to bridge the gap between the contract price and a low appraisal price up to $10,000 or up to $115,000 again if you have that money in addition to your down payment and closing costs that just protects you if the appraisal comes in $20,000 to low then you have the the option at that point that you can back out and get your earnest money back at that point or or perhaps to renegotiate with the seller maybe the seller is willing to split the difference or something like that I I will say one thing if you're like hey we only have we we can't do much but we have like an extra $5,000 at play here to make up you know for a low appraisal should we write that in I I would say not because that just sounds weak that sounds like you're you don't have a whole lot of money you're cash poor I'm not saying that you're cash for it just sounds like it now you're putting you know the ideas and the seller's mind potentially they're looking at this offer and they're like what they can only make up a $55,000 difference between the contract and the appraisal price that doesn't sound like and and they're only putting 3 and a half% down that doesn't sound like they have a whole lot of money I I'm not so sure about that I would prefer it to be at least $10,000 that you have that you can put towards bridging that appraisal shortfall Gap in order to write that in I feel like that at that point you start to look more serious as a buyer and that inspires more confidence to the sell so that's the appraisal contingency all right let's go on to inspections there's not really an inspection contingency in in form 310 but this is what we spent that episode I think I said 26 where we talked about the Greenville contract or this technically it's the scr South Carolina Realtor Association contract it has a section Section 8 where you have three check boxes as is repair procedure or doe deal diligence and I did not say those in the order that they appear on the on the contract form but those are the three options as is repair procedure due diligence obviously the strongest out of all of them is the Asis one but that's there's an important distinction to be made about when you're purchasing a property as is okay the way it's written in that contract form is that as is if you check that box what you're saying is that you cannot get your earnest money back on the on based on the condition of the property for any reason for any reason based on the condition of the property you can inspect but if you find something major and you decide at that point hey I want to back out because I found something crazy in here you know major structural issues you're in trouble you're in trouble you're you're at that point technically the the seller can take your earnest money in order for you to back out and so that's something that's an extreme maneuver now that obviously makes your offer really strong if you're saying hey I'm I'm buying this as is I am I don't care what the condition of the property is I'm confident in it I'm willing to purchase it as is yeah that that makes your offer super strong and that's an offer that most sellers are going to be really excited about although I had one recently where we did it as is and it wasn't accepted because apparently they just got some crazy other offers out there but I only recommend going that route because that that's really risky and I I don't like Risk I really don't I only recommend going the Asis route if if you are really confident the home is in very good condition maybe it's a newer home maybe you can just tell it's been kept up with really well it's in real good condition or you're a buyer that has a a lot of money in the bank that you can put towards repairs and you just really love the house and and you're willing to to take the risk it's an acceptable level of risk and that's what we're that's what we're evaluating here how much risk is there going the Asis route again with a newer home there's not as much risk with a home that has has been kept in very good condition there's not as much risk in order to try to to get a full idea of what the situation is with a home I always recommend to my clients and and I do this when when I'm showing the houses let's look at the roof let's see what condition is that roof in let's look at the AC units let's try to to try to figure out how old they are a lot of sellers they'll put ages of the AC conditions on their sell disclosure that are flat out wrong so you you need to look at that yourself look in the crawl space if there is one how does the crawl space look there's all sorts of different things to look at that will help you to understand the major systems of the home not just the interior condition but also all these other things and then if you look at all those other things and you're still confident you know the the roof looks new and in good shape the AC's are newer condition etc etc now that can give you confidence with being a little bit more aggressive maybe even as aggressive as going as is in terms of your offer however there are the two other options which are the repair procedure option and the due diligence option due diligence is the simplest one and again I discussed this way back in that earlier episode so I'm not going to get too far in the weeds but due diligence means you can back out for any reason well that's not an option that a lot of sellers want to see they don't want to give buyers that much Liberty but the repair procedure option is kind of clunky because that forces sellers to do repairs and and that's just the way that whole thing is structured is that you're doing inspections you're asking for repairs and then the seller has to do those repairs so let's say you have a situation where a seller is wanting to sell a house as is but you as the buyer are not willing to to make an offer with no ability to back out on the basis of the condition of the property you really only have one option and that is to go the due diligence route and you can modify it and and initial you know make modifications and initial the language to say that you're you're not going to ask for repairs you're going to purchase it as is I ran into this recently where that was a possibility I went to the listing agent to ask hey what would your client prefer would your client prefer the due diligence route or would your client prefer to make repairs and for us to go the repair procedure out and he was like yeah they they would just prefer to to do the repair procedure rather than giving buyers all that Liberty to back out okay done deal none of these options are great I feel like that's one of the biggest shortfalls of of the contract form that we use even though they modified it extensively recently but it is what it is this is what we have to deal with and so again this is all based on what the buyer is comfortable with what the seller is comfortable with and trying to find the best fit for all the parties last but not least there is and this is even though you would think this is a part of the inspection contingency area it's not which is a CL 100 contingency and that is what you might have heard in other areas referred to as a termite letter or wood destroying organisms letter whatever you want to call it we call it the cl1 100 and it's when they look at especially if it's across space house where an inspector specifically a pest inspector for instance Terminix would be an example that might come to mind goes in the crawl space or the basement or whatever the foundation of home is and looks for termites potential current infestation past infestations damage mold fungus powderpost beetles anything that would destroy that would be a wood destroying organism down there now this is a separate contingency from the inspections one as I've already said and so this becomes kind kind of interesting I think it's a separate contingency because we have a lot of moisture and a lot of termites down here so it's like they broke it out into its own thing but let's say for instance that you make the offer as is but you still want to to check for termites and moisture that's still an an important detail to you which I can fully understand if it would be you do do have that option and then even though you can't back out on the basis of the condition of the home if there is an active infestation of termites or standing water or something that causes or or molds something that causes the CL 100 to fail now at that point you as the buyer can back out you know if the seller won't remedy those things and and so that is an option if you go the due diligence route which again that gives you the ability to back out for any reason really you don't need to have the cl00 contingency at all because you can just do that during your due diligence period by the way some lenders require the CL 100 so actually I had an offer recently on a listing that was as is but had the CL 100 contingency in there because the lender required that so that's just something to keep in mind as well different lenders have different requirements when it comes to that but yeah if you're going to the due diligence route there's really no point in even having that contingency just knock it out during your due diligence period as long as it's done within 30 days prior to closing because that's what most lenders want some are a little bit more flexible on that but a lot of them want it to be done no later than 30 days prior to closing if you're doing a repair procedure you might as well just go ahead and and include that co100 contingency in there anyway because you're already inspecting for other things you might as well inspect for termites and moisture which are probably going to be a bigger deal than anything that's revealed inside the home so yeah absolutely so there aren't very many instances in which I think you should wave the the cl00 again if it's you got to look at the at the risk right let's say that this is a home that's just a couple of years old and it's on a slab foundation and all of that you probably don't have you probably have a a very low likelihood of there being termites or moisture issues so at that point it it might be an acceptable risk for a homeless on a crawl space or has a big basement or whatever I'm very leery of waving the co100 contingency again if you if you have enough money that it's like you know what I just want to get this house and I'm willing to give up that earnest money that that's kind of overshadows all of this if you're willing to surrender your earnest money if you if you have enough money in the bank that's like you know what that $3,000 or $5,000 whatever I feel like this is an acceptable risk and if I lose that money that hurts I don't like that but it's okay it's okay if I lose that we'll just keep moving then that gives you the most amount of flexibility then you can wave as many of these as as as many of these contingencies as you want because you're willing to to Forfeit that earnest money again I don't want that to happen so I always discuss that with my buyer clients as much as possible but let's say that you're in a situation where you're just really having a hard time finding a home and you find the perfect home you might and and there's multiple offers of course because there always is on the perfect home you might need to go in you know strong with your offer and if you have the ability to to take that risk and to take any of these risks you you need to consider that that needs to be something that you keep in mind and so that's something that I talk through with all my buyer clients and make sure that they understand okay here is the risk here is what could happen in this situation here's what I'm concerned about here's what I'm not concerned about and we had that discussion and through that process we try to craft the best possible offer that gives you the best chance at winning in the bidding war without you losing sleep at night and that's that's my metric I'll I'll talk to my clients a lot about this I'll say what would cause you to lose sleep would you lose more sleep if you submitted this offer th with you know with this higher price and none of these contingencies are you going to say oh man I'm I'm really putting myself out there or would you lose sleep if you lost out on the home because because you didn't do that that gut feeling at the end of the day is really really important because even if it's irrational it's there and you don't want to buy a house and you don't want to go through a process where that is just lingering where you just have a nasty feeling the entire time but also you don't want to to not go in Strong Enough lose out on the house that you really love and then that then lingers for the rest of time where it's like every house that comes on the market you're like you know what I don't like this one as much I like the other one I wish I had gotten the other one and so you need to to take all of that into consideration okay I think that you guys are now experts on all of these contingencies how to win the bidding war hopefully I am the one helping you win these bidding wars and all of my contact information is in the show notes if you want to reach out to me for any reason I love hearing from you guys and also as always please make sure you subscribe that you don't miss any future episodes leave a rating and a review if you haven't done that until next time happy bidding [Music]