Home Buying: How to Win in a Competitive Seller's Market

Competing with other buyers on a home you love? Here are three things that actually improve your odds of getting the offer accepted.

Hi, I'm Tanja Odzak, Realtor with eXp Realty, helping people sell and buy homes right here in the East Bay for the last 10 years.

Price matters most directly, the more offers a listing agent has in hand, the more competitive yours needs to be. Contingencies come next, inspections, appraisal, and loan are your three buyer protections, and in a competitive situation, tightening those timeframes or carefully removing one (with a full understanding of the risk) can be what wins the home. Every agent will caution against waiving them, for good reason, but in the right competitive situation it's sometimes the deciding factor.

A full earnest money deposit also signals you're a serious, well-qualified buyer, real skin in the game. Combine that with a clean, simple offer, the more complicated an offer gets, the more likely it loses to a straightforward one.

I'm Tanja Odzak, and I've sold over $100 million worth of homes with a decade of experience in the East Bay. Every buyer's financial situation is different, so the right strategy varies. Let's talk about yours, working with me costs you nothing, the seller covers my fee.