r/AskRealEstateAgents

We’re selling our house and I’m curious what other sellers/buyers/realtors think about this situation because I’m trying to figure out what is reasonable after inspection vs. what is asking too much.

We accepted an offer at **$241,000 with $13,000 in seller concessions**. So we’re already giving a pretty substantial amount toward the buyers’ closing costs.
They had their inspection and now there are additional repair requests.

The bigger things we’re dealing with are:

**Roof:** The inspector found possible storm/hail damage. We’re now having a roofer look at it and may potentially have to involve homeowners insurance. Our wind/hail deductible is almost **$10,000**, so obviously this could become a huge expense depending on what insurance says and whether the roof actually needs replacement.

**AC:** They had concerns about the AC. We spoke with an HVAC company, and it sounds like having it serviced/maintained may be enough rather than replacing anything.

**Water heater area:** There is damaged drywall behind/around the water heater that appears to have had some water exposure. The buyers are asking for the drywall to be replaced. Our concern is that we don’t want to just cover it with new drywall without first knowing whether there is an active leak, additional water damage, or mold behind it.

There are some other inspection items too, but these are the ones that could potentially turn into the most money.
I completely understand that buyers want the house to be safe and that legitimate issues should be addressed. At the same time, we already agreed to **$13k in concessions**, and I don’t want this to turn into us basically paying their closing costs AND then fixing/replacing every item an inspector noted.

For anyone who has been through this as a seller or buyer:

**How much would you agree to repair after already giving $13k in concessions?**

Would you focus only on major/safety/financing issues and say no to cosmetic or maintenance items?

And if the roof ends up needing an insurance claim with a nearly $10k deductible, would you renegotiate anything with the buyer rather than just absorbing that entire cost on top of the concessions?

I’m not trying to be difficult with the buyers — I just want to make sure we’re not agreeing to way more than is normal because we’re trying to keep the sale together.
Would love to hear how others would handle this.

Sellers bought house in 2022 for 550k. Listed mid-August for 600, then dropped to 580, now at 560. They did another open house after price drop and no offers so far. I can’t offer until mid-November so it will be about 90 DOM. House is pretty niche, not kid-friendly, small, sits on an acre that is all trees and no yard. Semi rural area about 30 miles outside Seattle. My plan… offer 500k with seller covering closing costs and buy downs (about $40k all said and done). Using a VA loan and offer fits within max concessions etc. Is there anything I could do to make the offer less of a shock? Maybe offer a quick close? Waive minor repairs? I already know the worst thing they can say is no. Thanks!

House listed about 2 weeks ago. Some houses in my neighborhood have gone under contract quickly (within days) while others have sat. We have a lot of views and favorites (which I know doesn’t mean much) but minimal showings. My realtor says because of the time of year and because we have an upstairs master, even if we drop the price, we might be waiting until the new year for the right buyer.

It seems to me that if the house is priced right, it should move more quickly than that, but realtor was hesitant on dropping price (and so is my partner). We aren’t in a major rush, but I am worried about sitting too long and that looking bad to potential buyers as well.

Any advice?

We looked at a house and were planning to make an offer but wanted to see it again. An offer had come in on the house and the sellers agent didn’t notify our agent that there was an offer until after they took a conditional offer. Are agents allows to do this? I thought agents were supposed to notify any agent that came to view the property that there’s an offer?

First off, I have been told that there is no real correlation between getting an offer and showings and the viewing to save ratio on Zillow. I have a listing in coming soon and I am at a 15% ratio now (27 saves for under under 200 views and I know I have viewed it probably 5-6 times. This is much higher than the other homes coming soon and think we are priced appropriately (they are not).

We are in coming soon status listing goes live and can be shown next weekend and have no showings yet. From your experience is there truely no correlation in between how many people save (vs view your listing) and selling the house?

We only have the external posted and professional pictures coming soon!

We sold our house over the summer and are living with family while we look for our new home. There is a subdivision we love and one house came on the market within the past 3 months we’ve been looking. We put an offer in the very next morning it came on the market but got outbid unfortunately. Our hearts are now really set on this specific subdivision. Is there anything we can do to try to get into this sub or get insight into any upcoming homes heading to market?

Is it common to only stage the first floor of a house? I am working with a realtor that does not want to stage the entire upstairs. The upstairs is empty now since all of our furniture was removed.

I think the upstairs looks terrible empty since this is considered a “luxury property”. We were under the impression the entire house (first floor and second floor) was going to be staged since we were told all of our furniture needed be moved out. We had nice furniture and bedroom sets that would have looked better in the upstairs bedrooms. Now everything has been donated and moved out, so it’s empty. Do you commonly put houses in the market with an upstairs that is completely empty?

I am not a real estate agent. I was hoping to get input from people that have more experience in this realm. Thank you!!

I’m looking to buy a house next year in NYC. The expectation is that I would hire a good friend of mine of 20 years to represent us.

However, the only caveat is that I don’t really want him having access to our financials. He’s part of a group of friends where I don’t really discuss finances. I don’t really want him to know how much money we have. I feel like it could leak to my friend group, who are not doing that well financially. Maybe they’ll see me differently or ask me to invest in their business ideas.

I’ve always downplayed how much money my wife and I have in savings, how much our household income is, my investments, etc. But we are multimillionaires through our income and some good investments. I’ve had friends, including him who’ve asked me in the past to invest in some business ideas. I played off like I don’t have the money for it.

So my question is, would my real estate agent friend get access to our savings information? Or our taxes? How many years back in our taxes will he ask to see?

I would like to hire him so he can get commission, but we’re also looking in a neighborhood he doesn’t have expertise in so that’s our excuse to not hire him.

But anyway, how does it usually work when buying a house?

My wife and I purchased a home in NY in 2024 which was listed by the seller and is on the county tax records as a 3 bedroom home. Once we moved in we realized one of the rooms that was being used as a bedroom is in an add on that has no heat running into it from the main system. I am working with some HVAC companies to see if we can split our system into the additional room, do we have to notify anyone or if its already listed as 3 bedroom can we continue to leave it as such?

Just listed my house today with a broker family friend. He stated it's better to list high and offer incentives instead of going below market and shooting for a bidding war. On Zillow today we are about a 1 like for every 20 views. Is this ok or does this show the house is priced too high.

A lot of the other houses that were recently posted have a higher ratio like 1/15 or 1/10.

I know it only takes one person to bite in order to sell. Does this even matter?

House has been on the market 80days, agent said they haven’t gotten any offers on it so far. They listed the house for $599k after buying it 2 months before that for $285k- he didn’t put on a new roof or new windows those were done when he purchased it for the 285k but he did new flooring throughout, painted and new appliances in the kitchen and countertops and a new deck.
Taxes and fees for that particularly house are HIGH.
Anyways he has lowered the price to 524k and we were going to offer 430k - comps in that neighborhood support’s that. With 6% concessions -
It’s what we could afford and what we think the house is worth. Clearly no one thinks it’s worth the 524k still- as it’s been that price for a month and still no bites.
Thoughts?!

My mom has a job offer in another state and her start date is in a month and we need to sell the house asap.
Renovations needed that we cannot afford:
-a new hvac
-replace the kitchen’s vinyl flooring
-replace the pantry
-there is water damage to the porch and some warping, not sure if it needs replaced or simply painted. It’s a full ramp and deck around the front and side of the house
-small spot of broken tile on kitchen wall

It’s 3 bed 2 baths, 2000sqft, on 5 acres of forest with about 0.75 of an acre cleared, with a large chicken coop and shed. We live in Charles City, Virginia. The average estimate for its worth across realty sites is about 340k, ideally we want to sell for 300k and we currently owe I think 251k. Ive seen realtors fees cost about 6% of the sale so to break even I’m guessing we’d need to sell for minimum 270k. I’ve also seen people say to employ a realty lawyer and independently sell to save money. My mom can go 4 months without paying the mortgage before being forced into foreclosure. We’ve also considered deed in lieu of foreclosure, it just takes such a massive credit hit and her score is only 601. We’re also considering those “we buy homes for fast cash” people and we’ve been warned of scams but genuinely we just need out of the lease without debt, we don’t even NEED to profit. We can’t afford the mortgage or repairs after a detrimental job layoff and acquired medical bills. What do we do??

Need to understand a bit more about what can a buyer negotiate with their agent in terms their fee and getting some of it put towards down payment or loan rate reduction (points buy).

In NYS. We did not have our own realtor, and so contacted the selling realtor, who connected us with her partner and did a "split" of some sort so that it wasn't a conflict of interest. The listing stated "Seller requests best and final - no escalation clauses will be accepted."

We made our best and final offer - $50,000 over asking, plus $50,000 EMD. It felt like a pretty solid - "we don't want to lose this house" bid. We received a phone call saying that there were 10 offers, and we were "almost the same" as another offer, did we want to change our offer? We said that we'd made our best and final, and declined. At the next call, our offer was "still under consideration, but there were 2 other offers above ours. This implies they called all the other potential buyers and asked if they wanted to adjust their bid. When arguing that this seemed unethical after posting "give us your best and final offer" she said " we have to represent the seller", and we said "you're supposed to be representing us." Yes, the same office was representing the seller, but wasn't the whole point of them being dual agents that someone actually represented us and worked on our behalf?

Is it acceptable to post "best and final offers, no escalation clauses" but then contact a group of bidders to ask if they want to increase their bid?

Also, separate but semi-related: if a buyer says, "tell the seller I will give them $2500 right now to buy the option to beat the high bid by at least $2500. I may choose to beat the bid, I may choose not to, but they keep the $2500 no matter what, as they gave me the option to beat it." Is that unethical or illegal?

We made an offer on a house that has been on the market for 60 days. Their agent came back today saying they have a different offer they are about to sign, but if we offer asking price, they’ll consider it. I could’ve sworn I saw a comment months ago about a form or something my real estate agent could fill out to find out their agent actually does have another offer. Advice?