How Serious Are You?

You just found THE perfect house. It has exactly what you have been looking for and is in the neighborhood you have always wanted to live in.

You call the agent and she asks you to make an offer and wants to know how much money you can put down on the property. You have already told her you have $10,000 set aside to cover the down payment and closing costs. Now is the time to decide just how serious you are about buying this home.

You tell the agent you want to offer X number of dollars for the home and that you want to put down $500. She tells you that you should put more money down on the home if you are serious.

Here’s why more money down is better:

1. You are showing the seller that you are ready right now to buy the home.
2. More money down with a lower offer is many times more acceptable to agents and sellers because it lets them know you mean business.
3. It shows you in a more favorable financial light. What this means is that if you have more money down people will assume you have a better chance of your loan going to closing than the other person’s loan.
4. If the seller gets the same offer with less money down they will probably accept your offer first.
5. It’s completely refundable if your offer isn’t the accepted offer, so you lose nothing.

So what kind of deposit should you put down? Everyone you know told you $500 was acceptable. In today’s real estate market it’s really not. You should consider putting $5000 down on the home you want. If you need any more reason, just consider how you’ll feel if someone else gets THE home.

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