You found the house, talked through the numbers, considered the terms, signed the paperwork, and your agent submitted the offer. Now comes one of the hardest parts of buying a home: waiting for someone else to respond.
For many buyers, this is exactly when the second-guessing begins. Did we offer too much? Should we have offered more? What if they have another offer? Why haven’t they responded yet? Should we change something before they do? Within a few hours, you can find yourself questioning a decision that you felt perfectly comfortable making when you signed the offer.
The first thing I want my buyers to understand is that no news is not necessarily bad news. There is often quite a bit happening between the time an offer is submitted and the time you receive an answer, and some of the most important work may be happening while you’re sitting there wondering why everything seems so quiet.
There May Be More Happening Than You Realize
Once your offer is submitted, it doesn’t simply land in front of a seller who immediately decides yes or no. A good listing agent is going to review the offer carefully, look at the financing and contingencies, speak with the lender when appropriate, and make sure they understand the terms well enough to answer their seller’s questions. Your lender may also reach out to the listing agent to reinforce the strength of your financing and explain where you are in the loan process.
At the same time, I may be talking back and forth with the listing agent, asking questions, gathering information, and trying to understand where the seller may have some flexibility. The listing agent may then need to take something back to the seller before responding to me. I may respond with another question or possibility, which they then need to discuss with their client. Negotiations don’t always happen in one clean conversation.
That also means I’m not necessarily going to call you after every single conversation I have with the other agent. I need some breathing room to work through the smaller variables of the deal and see where the conversation leads. When we reach a point where I need your approval, or we’re getting close to the boundaries you’ve already given me, I’m coming back to you. In the meantime, part of what you’ve hired me to do is take some of that negotiation off your plate and use my knowledge and experience to represent you.
Remember That the Seller Is a Person, Too
When you’re buying a house, buying that house may be the biggest thing happening in your world at that particular moment. You submitted an offer, you’re excited, and naturally you want an answer. The seller may care very much about selling their home, but we don’t know what else is happening in their life that day. They may have work, children, family commitments, travel, or any number of things preventing them from immediately sitting down with their agent.
There can also be an emotional side of receiving an offer that buyers don’t always think about. Buyers often experience their strongest emotions before making the offer because they’ve already fallen in love with the house and imagined themselves living there. Sellers can experience those emotions at a different point. They may have intellectually decided they’re ready to sell, but seeing an actual offer can suddenly make leaving the home feel real.
For some sellers, that house represents years of their life, children growing up, holidays, relationships, losses, celebrations, and memories. Selling real estate is a business transaction, but the people involved aren’t emotionless business entities. Sometimes a seller simply needs a little time to process what is happening before making a decision.
Don’t Negotiate Against Yourself Just Because You’re Nervous
Waiting can make buyers want to do something simply because doing something feels better than doing nothing. That’s when I sometimes hear, “Maybe we should just increase our offer.”
There isn’t one answer to that question because every transaction is different. If an original offer was far below what the market supports and we’ve learned something that changes our strategy, coming up may make sense. On the other hand, if we’ve studied the comparable sales, looked at the area’s list-price-to-sales-price trends, considered the condition of the property, and deliberately arrived at a number we believe makes sense, we shouldn’t abandon that strategy simply because a few hours have passed without a response.
We have to give the seller an opportunity to respond. It’s very easy for a buyer to say no to themselves before giving the seller the opportunity to say yes, no, or let’s keep talking.
I’m also not simply sitting around during that waiting period. If we haven’t heard anything within a reasonable amount of time, I’m following up. I’m communicating with the listing agent and trying to understand where we stand. If they’re waiting on their seller, I want to know that. If something in our offer is creating hesitation, I want to know that too. Eventually, a prolonged lack of response becomes information of its own, but we don’t need to treat the first period of silence as a rejection.
Plan Your Next Moves Before You Need Them
I like buyers to think about an offer a little like a game of chess. You don’t want to wait until the other person makes a move before you start considering what your next move could possibly be. Once we’ve submitted an offer, we start talking about the possibilities. The seller can accept it, reject it, or counter it, and we should be mentally prepared for all three.
That means thinking about the home and your goals while we’re waiting. What is your hard no? What’s the highest price at which this home still makes sense for you financially? Which terms would you be willing to adjust? Where do you have flexibility, and where don’t you? If the seller counters at X, would you be willing to go to Y? If Y doesn’t work, is there another move available, or have we reached the point where you’re comfortable walking away?
Those are much better questions to consider while you’re calm than when a counteroffer has just arrived and you suddenly feel like you’re about to lose the house. We want enough flexibility to negotiate effectively without crossing the boundaries you established for yourself.
And negotiation isn’t automatically about meeting in the middle. I don’t particularly like that phrase because the middle isn’t necessarily where the best deal is for my client. Negotiation is about understanding what matters to each side, identifying where there’s room to move, and working toward the best situation we can create for you. Sometimes that means moving. Sometimes it means holding firm. Sometimes it means finding a solution neither side started with, and occasionally it means knowing when to walk away.
Give the Decision You Already Made Some Room
There’s a reason people are often encouraged to give themselves time after a major emotional event before making another major decision. When emotions are running high, a little time can provide perspective. Buying a house is obviously its own kind of life event, but I think the underlying principle still applies: after making a significant financial and emotional decision, you don’t necessarily need to immediately reopen that decision.
There’s an old Southern saying, “Dance with the one who brung ya.” I think there’s something to that when you’re waiting on an offer. If we’ve found a home you genuinely want, carefully considered the decision, made an offer, and started trying to negotiate a transaction, give that decision enough time to play out.
That doesn’t mean you can’t stay aware of what’s happening in the market, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t know what Plan B might look like. In fact, there’s often another house you’ve already seen that will pop into your head if this one doesn’t work out. But if you submit an offer and immediately start frantically searching for something else, that gives me pause. It makes me wonder whether this was really the home you wanted or simply a home you liked enough to make an offer on.
If it’s the home you really want, let’s give ourselves a reasonable opportunity to get it before mentally moving into the next one.
Focus on What You Can Actually Control
You can’t control when the seller sits down with their agent, whether another buyer submits an offer, what number a seller has fixed in their mind, or how quickly everyone on the other side communicates. Constantly replaying those possibilities won’t change them.
What you can control is whether you made a thoughtful offer based on good information. You can know your financial limits and decide ahead of time where you have flexibility. You can prepare yourself for an acceptance, rejection, or counteroffer. Most importantly, you can make sure you have an agent you trust to represent you when you’re not part of the conversation.
My responsibility is to keep you informed without making you ride along on every tiny turn in the negotiation. If there’s a meaningful update, you’ll hear from me. If I need a decision from you, we’ll talk. If we’re approaching one of the boundaries we’ve discussed, I’m coming back to you before we cross it. But if you haven’t heard from me every twenty minutes, don’t assume that means nothing is happening. Sometimes the reason it’s quiet on your end is because I’m working on your behalf on mine.
When the Answer Comes, We’ll Be Ready
Eventually, the seller will respond. If it’s an acceptance, great. We celebrate for a minute and then turn our attention to everything that comes next in the transaction. If it’s a rejection, we look at the situation and determine whether there’s another reasonable move available or whether it’s time to let this one go.
If it’s a counteroffer, that’s where all the thinking we’ve already done becomes valuable. Instead of reacting emotionally because we’re afraid of losing the house, we can look at what the seller changed, compare it with the boundaries we established, and decide whether we should accept, counter again, adjust another part of the offer, or walk away.
The goal isn’t to win every point in a negotiation. The goal is to get you into the right home on terms that still make sense after the excitement and adrenaline are gone. So once we’ve submitted your offer, give the process a little room. No news is not automatically bad news, silence doesn’t necessarily mean nothing is happening, and waiting doesn’t mean you need to start negotiating against yourself.
We’ve made our move thoughtfully. Now we give the other side enough time to make theirs.
