Hi guys, need some advice on this one.
Wife and I sold our clown house in August. Had various misadventures with renting and decided that we need to own, can't deal with living in close proximity to others in an apartment building and tired of dealing with whack job landlords. Have bid on four properties since then and have been beaten out twice, had one property withdraw from the market and another the seller was just impossible to deal with, so we walked away. We are not emotional negotiators, we make our mind up with a bid plan and then stick to that plan when the excitement starts.
Saw a house on Friday and loved it, was priced appropriately, we offered list price and expected to be done. After we submitted the bid we learned it was being offered by a relocation company, Cartus. Tons of horror stories on the web about problems dealing with these guys. They require us to sign their contract instead of the standard real estate contract for our area. I have my lawyer review it, he says it's fine except we need to move a few dates out. It restricts my rights pretty aggressively - no dates are honored in my favor, offers last forever, they take all the earnest money if we don't close for whatever reason, and they don't take liability for anything (as-is sale).
We put our offer in Friday, and signed all their required forms. Listing agent tells us she has six showings for Saturday. Our agent says, cancel them you have a full list price offer. She (of course) shows it anyway, and my guess is she told every buyer she had a full list price offer.
Today I get a call that there are two other offers on the table, and I need to give best and final by Sunday, 5pm.
So, I know from negotiating school that this is a classic "bid against yourself" situation, and I should probably let my list price offer stand. We are the first bid in and we're putting 10% down at contract close. However, I have to imagine that every buyer walking in the door today was told there's a strong list price offer on the table, can they do better? So I'm considering offering 5k over list, and if that doesn't work I walk away not feeling bad about it.
I hate the idea that I'm handing them another 5k because they asked me to bid against myself. What would you do in this situation? Backup plan is to bid on a different house we liked, but was overpriced, that we saw three weeks ago. Listing agent has been emailing my agent every day for three weeks, and reduced the price twice. So feel a lot better about our chances on that one. I know there's always another property over the horizon; but we're running on empty trying to find a new home.