Banks are just like people. They give instructions that are sometimes confusing and make mistakes. When they do you should be positioned to take advantage of their mistake.

 

A few months ago a bank listed a property with an agent and I can only assume that the instructions were given to sell it quickly. As a result it was priced about $15,000 too low at $179,900. The house needed a lot of work, but with a repaired sales value of around $250,000 they were still too low.

 

After they received multiple offers in the first days of listing they raised their price from $179,900 to $183,500...then had an offer fail a few weeks later. They had either accepted a cash backup offer or got impatient because they ended up with a final sale price of $170,000 from a cash Buyer. My guess is that they started with a higher offer than the list price, but once that failed they accepted the 'Easy' offer and closed it out. A couple of takeaways:

• First offers often fail
• Being a back up offer is a REALLY good idea
• Even though banks should always make logical decisions they still have failure points. Ultimately it is still people making decisions.
• Careful pricing is wise. If you under price a property then try to make upward adjustments it nearly always backfires.
• Be patient. It is not a good thing to sell a house in a day. It means the house was under-priced, often dramatically if you get multiple people who want to buy without even thinking about it.