By Jim Weiker
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
When shopping for their piece of the Earth, homebuyers increasingly are asking for the moon
From pool tables to appliances, new roofs to big-screen televisions, buyers are demanding — and often receiving — concessions from sellers.
“Buyers now want a house to be perfect,” said Jeff Ruff, a partner in the Real Living HER agency Vutech & Ruff. “Sellers generally have to do everything, down to the smallest detail, and, if they don’t, in many cases, there’s just too many choices and buyers will move on.”
In the past five years, as central Ohio home sales and prices have steadily dropped, the real-estate balance of power has shifted to buyers. This year, with home sales down 16 percent and almost 16,000 Columbus-area homes on the market, buyers are flexing their muscles more than ever at the bargaining table.
Besides sometimes steep price discounts, buyers routinely are asking sellers to pay thousands in closing costs.
Then there are the physical demands, which range from tiny to tremendous.
Sue Lusk-Gleich, a Keller Williams Capital Partners agent, recalls getting a long list of conditions with an offer on a Columbus house she was selling.
“I was listing a home in Eastmoor, and buyers insisted that we fix a screened-in door to a screened porch because it didn’t latch properly,” she said. “I said, seriously? Let’s get down to what’s really important.”
On the other extreme, Lusk-Gleich has had buyers insist on a new roof, which can cost sellers $6,000 to $10,000.
Such requests typically are prompted by the findings of an inspection, which has become the weapon of choice for homebuyers seeking deals after agreeing on a price.
Traditionally used to identify structural or safety defects or items that one day might need repair, the inspection has evolved into a laundry list of problems sellers are expected to remedy — at their cost — before the deal can close.
The result is often a two-tiered set of negotiations: once for the price and once again for all the items homeowners will pay to fix or replace.
“Inspections continue to be a renegotiation for the buyers, which is not what they were set up to be,” said Jo-Anne LaBuda, an agent with Keller Williams Capital Partners. “It’s become a time to renegotiate the contract, to see if they can get a better deal than they did initially.”
Savvy buyers know that once sellers see an inspection report, they must disclose all the problems to the next buyer, leaving them with even more incentive to close the deal on the table.
“They’ve got you,” said Ralph Renninger, a RE/MAX Premier Choice agent in Powell. “You’re already in contract, you’re excited, and now they come with a list of X amount of items that could be $3,000 or $4,000 more. What you would have said no to before, now you just put your head down and say, ‘OK.’ ”
For that reason, many agents recommend that sellers avoid viewing the full inspection report.
“I ask for just the items that are relevant to the deal,” Lusk-Gleich said. “I don’t want the entire inspection.”
Columbus Board of Realtors President Rick Benjamin received a different set of requests when selling his own home last year.
“They asked for the pool table, which we left behind. Initially, we counted out the washer and dryer, but they had sold theirs and asked that we leave them,” said Benjamin, an agent with RE/MAX Premier Choice in Powell. “Pool tables, patio furniture, washers and dryers were ordinarily never part of the discussion.”
But Benjamin also knows buyers now have the upper hand: “If you don’t do it, they’ll walk.”
Agents understand that today’s buyers expect to get the best deals possible, but they caution against weighing down a deal with a bunch of merchandise.
“I’ve had a lot of buyers want to ask for big-screen TVs and pool tables and whatever they can, but lenders really frown on that,” said Chris Reese, an agent with Metro II Realty in Columbus. “Other than appliances and window coverings, lenders don’t want to see anything of value in the contract.”
Other demands come in less-traditional forms. Renninger had a buyer place a rent-to-own offer on a $430,000 home he was listing in Powell. The catch: The price would be negotiated after the home was rented for a year.
“They worried that the value would drop over the year, but there was no guarantee at all for my sellers,” said Renninger, whose clients rejected the deal. “Two years ago, that deal would never have even been on the table.”
Cindy Calendar, an agent with Coldwell Banker King Thompson’s Polaris office, grew equally frustrated with an offer she received on an estate home she was listing in the Northland area for $99,900. A shopper who had visited was pondering an offer when she saw a home down the street go on the market for $75,000.
So the buyer offered $75,000 for the house Calendar was listing.
“Theirs was a split; ours was a ranch and was all updated, but it didn’t matter to the buyer,” Calendar said. “Then she asked for 5 percent closing costs.”
Calendar’s clients, who were eager to sell, negotiated and eventually accepted $80,850.
But, as someone who also represents buyers, Calendar knows the other side of the coin.
Since February, she has represented a family looking to spend about $300,000 on a home. So far, she’s shown them more than 50 homes, none of them satisfactory.
She thought she found a home last week that fulfilled all her buyers’ wishes — 3,400 square feet, six bedrooms, an acre of land, a three-car garage, three living spaces and a mother-in-law suite — listed by a bank for $329,000, more than $100,000 less than it sold for new eight years ago.
“She walked in and didn’t like it,” Calendar said. “She wants everything perfect.
“But for a lot of buyers, they know the market’s flooded and they think there’s going to be more coming, that there’s going to be a better deal tomorrow.”
jweiker@dispatch.com
