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Sometimes a Buyer Should Walk Away (Part 1)

by Karen Goodman on December 15, 2007

Every buyer needs an agent that is working on their behalf.

A good buyer’s agent should not only be skilled at negotiations and solving problems that can derail a contract, but should also be willing to tell their buyers to walk away from a house and keep looking.

Watch out for Future Expenses:

I recently worked with a first-time home buyer in her home search and helped her get out of her first contract. She found a cute little home that she really liked. The price was a bit of a stretch for her, but she really liked the house and decided to move forward.

Then we got our inspections. There were the typical issues that you’ll find with every home, and we certainly could have gotten to the sellers to address the major problems. BUT, the home inspection revealed that all of the major systems were on their last leg. The roof, air conditioner, and furnace were all really old, and were likely to need replacement in the next couple of years. We asked the seller to give us some monetary concessions, and they said no. I’m not surprised that they didn’t agree, since sellers rarely fix things that are old but not currently broken. They offered a home protection plan, and said that should be enough. The listing agent kept pushing me to convince my buyer that the home protection plan would cover the repairs when the time came. But home protection plans have plenty of exclusions, and I couldn’t promise my buyer that all of the items would be covered by when they finally broke (and roofs are never covered!).

So, my buyer and I had a candid conversation, and I encouraged her to walk-away. She didn’t have the money in the bank to replace these items if they ended not being covered in the home protection plan. Every homeowner needs to be prepared for unexpected expenses, but if she had bought this house, the probability was just too high that big repairs would be needed soon.

We kept looking. She was getting discouraged, but I just kept encouraging her that we would find her house eventually. The last time we went out looking at homes she picked out 4 homes to see after work. I suggested we add one more…we had time. So we added another house to our list…one that she almost scratched because it was just a few blocks farther than where she wanted to live.

Can you guess what happened?

She bought the last house. The one she almost scratched from her list. The house is everything she wanted, with no big looming repairs in the next few years. She closed on it last month, and can’t be happier.

Could I have talked her into buying that first house?

Probably. But it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do.

Sometimes watching out for someone’s best interests means telling them to walk away.

When you are ready to make your next purchase, make sure you have a buyer’s agent that will watch out for your best interests. And definitely don’t just call the listing agent and let them talk you into using a dual agent.

For more information on the type of expenses homeowners need to expect, check out my recent article that discusses the difference between repairs and home improvements.

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