When an offer arrives, the instinct is to look at the price first and ask whether it's enough. That's a natural reaction — and it's also an incomplete one. An offer is a package. Price, earnest money, financing type, contingencies, inspection rights, appraisal language, requested seller concessions, proposed closing date, possession terms — each element has value, and each one represents a negotiating variable that can be moved.
The seller who looks only at price often accepts a high offer that falls apart at inspection, while the slightly lower offer with strong financing and clean terms would have closed in three weeks. We've seen this happen enough times to read the full offer before forming a recommendation — and to explain, clearly, what each term means for your actual outcome.
Smart negotiation is not about getting every concession. It is about understanding what matters to you and what matters to the buyer, and finding the intersection where a sale holds together through closing.
Our offer review process is thorough before it's reactive. We present the full picture before making a recommendation.
In the Massachusetts transaction process, the accepted offer is the beginning of a sequence that includes the home inspection, the Purchase and Sale Agreement signing, the appraisal, the mortgage commitment deadline, and the final walkthrough before closing. Each step is a potential point of renegotiation if the buyer's team finds an advantage they did not have at offer time.
An inspection contingency, for example, gives a buyer the right to request repairs or credits after inspection — or to exit the contract entirely. How that contingency is written, and what threshold triggers buyer rights, varies significantly between offers. An offer with a "pass/fail" inspection contingency is very different from one that gives the buyer unlimited renegotiation rights on any finding.
Similarly, an appraisal contingency protects a buyer if the home appraises below contract price. In a competitive market where you've received an above-asking offer, an appraisal gap clause — where the buyer commits to making up the difference between the appraisal and the contract price — is worth real money. We negotiate for it when the market supports it.
The terms in the accepted offer set the rules for everything that follows. Our job is to make sure those rules favor you — or at minimum, that you understand them fully before you agree to them.
These conversations happen at every listing. The answers depend on your specific situation, but the thinking behind them is consistent.
It depends on how long the listing has been active and what the market looks like that week. If you received the offer in the first week and there are other buyers who showed strong interest, it may be worth holding for 24 to 48 hours to see if additional offers emerge. If the offer is clean and you have no reason to believe better is coming, accepting it quickly signals good faith and protects the sale. We give you our honest read on the specific circumstances before recommending a path.
An escalation clause says the buyer will beat any competing offer by a set increment, up to a cap. They're common in competitive Massachusetts markets. The right response depends on whether you have (or can realistically get) a competing offer, and whether you want to reveal the competing offer price to activate the escalation. We walk through the strategy before you respond.
Personal property inclusions and exclusions live inside the offer and the Purchase and Sale Agreement. What stays and what goes is entirely negotiable — and sometimes sellers are surprised to find that agreeing to include an item the buyer loves (and the seller was planning to donate) closes the sale cleanly. We treat every item that comes up as a negotiating variable, not an obligation.
We manage the situation transparently. Typically we notify all buyers that we have multiple offers and set a deadline for highest-and-best submissions. We do not reveal specific competing offer prices. We then present all offers to you simultaneously with our analysis of each. The goal is the best overall package — which is usually, but not always, the highest price.
Whether you have an offer in hand, are expecting one soon, or are still deciding whether to sell — we're ready to give you a clear, honest read on where you stand and what your options are.
— Lisa Sevajian
lisa.sevajian@exprealty.com · 978-457-3406
Top 1.5% of over 1,500,000 Realtors · Brokered by eXp Realty