Are Phoenix Home Sellers Required to Respond to Offers?

Two and three years ago, buyers felt a lot more comfortable making offers under list price, because they assumed if sellers wouldn’t accept a certain price, sellers would at least send back a counter offer. Now that the Phoenix housing market is picking up steam, home sellers in most price ranges up to $1,000,000 – depending on the property’s condition and how competitively it is priced – are starting to receive multiple offers on their listings. This is causing some buyers to ask themselves, “Are sellers required to respond to offers?”

More specifically, “Are they required to respond to MY offer?”

Short Answer

The short answer is, unfortunately, no. But let’s look at why…

Long Answer

Although the long answer still starts with “No,” it may be helpful if I share a few reasons below we’ve seen Phoenix home sellers give for not responding to every offer they receive. We don’t necessarily agree with each reasoning, but we do believe that buyers and sellers can benefit from a greater understanding of each other’s thought processes.

• If the home is new to the market, some sellers feel they should give other buyers more time to see their listing. We’ve seen some sellers wait to respond to any offers until the home has been on the market for at least three, five, or more, days. Depending on the price range, there are people who consider a listing “new” for the first month.
• If an offer comes in so low (usually more than 10%) below the current list price, some sellers won’t send back a counter offer to the prospective buyer, because the seller believes they are too far apart to ever agree on a purchase price.
• When a seller receives multiple offers, it simply may not be practical to respond to every offer. If the seller receives more than five offers, for example, oftentimes the seller and the seller’s agent (i.e., Listing Agent) will consider sending a Multiple Counter Offer to just the two or three best offers. Even if a seller only receives two or three offers, he or she may skip the counter offer process altogether if one of the offers is so attractive that the seller doesn’t want to risk scaring away the best offer.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are various reasons why Phoenix home sellers might not respond to offers. If you are thinking about selling your home, we’d be happy to tell you more about the contract negotiation process and what we, at The Hill Group, can do to get you the best offers possible. If you are thinking about buying a home, ask us to show you what we do to make your offer stand out so it gets accepted.