The Toxic Effect of Buyer’s Remorse on Home Sales

Pittsburgh Real Estate Podcast with Gina Giampietro

In our current market, buyer’s remorse is happening more than usual. This can have an adverse effect on home sales, but there is a way you can avoid it.

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Pittsburgh is a seller’s market right now, which means there are a lot of buyers for each home. Buyers are negotiating harder and bidding higher than they normally would’ve just to get the deal. Here’s the problem, though—they’re also having serious remorse after the fact.

If you’re a buyer in our market and you want to avoid buyer’s remorse, you need to know what you want. Do you really want that house? If you’re not sure and you put in an offer anyway and it gets accepted, that can lead to problems in the transaction.

When you enter a home sale feeling that you bid more than you normally would have on that home just so you could have it, you might not feel like negotiating when the home inspection comes along. Perhaps you saw another house and wanted to keep looking while the inspection was going on in case something better came up. Many agents are actually accommodating this trend, which gives you even more reason to not want to negotiate with the seller.

This is pretty unfair. The seller took their home off the market and chose to work in good faith with you to get to the closing table. They worked with you, and you chose to put in an offer on their house. Give them the opportunity to work with you. You don’t know what they’re willing to do to move the transaction along. You have no idea what’s in their head in terms of where they want to move or how quickly they want to move.

If you’re not sure you want to buy a home, then don’t put in the offer. Another house will come around. If you lose a house in the process because you weren’t ready or you didn’t know if it was the perfect house for you, that’s okay.

If you’re not ready to purchase a home, don’t purchase it.

If you made the decision to put that offer in, though, work with that decision and work with the seller. 90% of the time, it will work out for you. There will never be a perfect home or one that doesn’t have issues during the inspection. When you buy a home, it’s called ‘homeownership’ for a reason.

In any case, most homes come with home warranties anyway. If yours doesn’t, ask for one and keep it on the home—especially if its mechanical systems are old. That way you can alleviate some of the repairs. As a homeowner, you will have to negotiate taking on some of those repairs.

If you’re not ready to purchase a home, then don’t purchase it. Wait for the right one for you. At the same time, if you put an offer on a home, be fair and negotiate on it. If you want the seller to be fair with you, you also have to be fair with them.

If you have any questions about this or any other real estate topic or you have a topic in mind you’d like to see me discuss in a future video, please give me a call or send me an email. I would be more than happy to help you.