Las Vegas Home Buyers: Made Your Offer, Now What?

Congratulations! You've found a home you love, you've made the best offer you could (taking into account your price range, the market, etc.). Now what? Now it is time to be patient.

The offer your wrote, along with your finance information and earnest money check (a copy) is then sent to the seller's agent. Now, this is where it gets fun.

All seller's have three things they can do with your offer:

1. accept (you now have a contract);
2. reject (time to make an offer on your second choice); or
3. counter (you can accept, reject, or counter as well).

It really is that simple. What varies from seller to seller is timeframe.

Traditional Seller
If you are dealing with a traditional home seller (owner of the home) then you will generally get an answer to your offer pretty quickly. Usually within a day or two.

Short Sales
If you are dealing with a short sale situation. The owner of the home will first review your offer and do one of the three things I listed above. If the seller decides to accept your offer, the offer then goes to the seller's lender for their approval. This process can take up to 90 days! Yes, up to three months of waiting for an answer. Are you patient? If not, don't bother with short sales. If you are patient then go ahead. It really isn't any more difficult than buying any other home. It just takes longer. Recently, banks have started implementing processes to streamline the time to get an approval. Hopefully, the waiting times will drop.

Oh, until the bank comes back with an approval you don't have an agreement. If you find something else you can always withdraw your offer.

Bank Owned Properties (REO's)
Here you are not dealing with a traditional seller. You are dealing with a bank. I have found that answers usually come within a week or two on any offers submitted. Generally during this time frame the bank is working with multiple offers. For more information about buying Las Vegas bank owned properties click here.

Next week, I'll explain what accept, reject, and counter mean to you.

Related posts that might interest you:
Making an offer on a Las Vegas Home

What Should You Offer?

Las Vegas Bank Owned Properties