How Do I Make An Offer?
When buying a home in North Carolina you may feel overwhelmed, especially if it is your first time. Once you have the house hunting part out of the way and you have chosen the home that fits most of your wants and needs, it is time to put it in writing.
Your real estate agent, me hopefully:), will do quite a few things to prepare your offer. The first thing to be on the lookout for is comps, aka comparable properties. This is where your agent will pull sold comps preferably within the same neighborhood, but if not from the same area with like square footage, age, and other attributes. These should be sold comps within the last month or so. There are two main reasons for this. One, is to make sure you are not making your offer too high OR too low. The second reason is that if you are getting a loan the lender will order an appraisal. This is to insure that the price you are paying for the home will support the amount of money the lender will loan you. For example, if you are under contract for a home that has an accepted offer price of $500,000, but the appraisal comes back at $480,000, you will likely have to come to the table with an extra $20,000. This is always negotiable. You can ask the seller to come down in price, but with the way the market has been over the years a seller is not necessarily going to be eager to appease your request. Your due diligence fee is at risk as well, so it is best to base your offer off of sold comps to reduce this risk.
Putting it in Writing
North Carolina uses “Standard Form 2-T, Offer to Purchase and Contract” to put your offer in writing. This form is 17 pages long as of 2024. I say this because years ago it was only 5 pages or so and every year more provisions are added making the form longer.
There is a lot of verbiage in the OTP “Offer to Purchase” and every paragraph should be read and understood. For the most part, there are 5 main bullet points you should be paying extra attention to; offer price, due diligence fee, earnest money amount, the due diligence date and the close date. There are also other fill in the blank spaces you should pay close attention to such as, if there is any personal property to convey with the property and if there are any addenda attached to the offer. An addendum is used to add language to the contract if it is silent in the matter, such as if there is an expiration of offer (time) or if there are any obvious repairs to be addressed prior to closing. These are not the only things to be conscious of, but these do require special attention.
By law, there are disclosures to be completed as well prior to submitting an offer. Two of the most common disclosures are the Residential Property and Owner’s Association Disclosure Statement and the Mineral and Oil and Gas Rights disclosure. You will also sign a Buyer’s Agency Agreement and a Working With Real Estate Agents form. These two forms spell out the type of representation you will receive from your agent.
*there could be more forms depending on the home and Firm you work with.
Once you have completed the offer to purchase your agent will send to the listing agent (the seller’s agent) and they will ‘present’ the offer to the seller. Hopefully….you will get the house!
