How To Get An Offer Rejected

1. Continually call the listing agent (me), telling me you have been in this business for x number of years and back in 19xx you conducted real estate your way. Therefore, nothing has changed (except for a few laws, standards and practices) and you will still do it how you did back in the day. Oh please! Let's start off every relationship with other agents this way. And by the way, the barrage of text messages at 5 a.m. were a nice touch.

2. Submit an offer that is $40,000 less than the asking price. Be sure to say lots of negative things about why you client hates the house in an enclosed letter. Also, it is fun to include "after we exhasted the opsions, we decided to look at youre house." My seller will be charmed.

3. In said letter, be sure to have your buyer not spell check, use punctuation or any standard grammatical practices. My seller will know you are serious about purchasing. My seller will also know a lot of other tid-bits about you. You are what you write.

4. As the buying agent. Write such things in the contract--the contract your broker will be delighted to read--such as "cellers piade," "muchal" (seller's paid, mutual)  and, by all means, spell my sellers' names wrong. They love that.

5. Write in the contract your buyer will be paying the earnest deposit with money orders. Classy. In this day and age, why not a cashier's check or wire transfer? Can one get a money order for $3000?

6. Ask for $18,000 in closing costs. Yes, you read that number right. The seller wants to pay that much in buyer closing costs. In fact, I am sure everyone selling a home would delighted to cough up that much money for a buyer. And by the way, when you are asking for a crazy sum of money like that, please, don't give an explanation. Sellers have imaginations and crystal balls.

7. Definitely write to the selling agent and say, "I expect your sellers will counter." Nope. They have no desire to play this game. Give us something reasonable to work with. Thanks.

I would like to tell you this is one contract. I really would. In less than a 24 hour period, my seller rejected three offers. I don't blame them. I didn't even want to submit them.