The Assistant’s First Step for Incoming Offers

As my agent Ron Henderson and I get better and better in our roles, here’s one thing we’ve learned that will save you time and make both of you more efficient.

We receive offers in one of two ways: it’s emailed as a pdf directly to Ron, or it comes in through DotLoop in which case Ron also gets an email notification.

This next part is the KEY to the whole system. Ron doesn’t look at the offer. I’m sure you must know how much willpower that takes! But seriously, if the offer comes in during his lead generation time, he forwards it to Courtney our transaction coordinator. She looks over the offer in detail, making note of what parts will need to be corrected in an amendment or a counter offer. Let’s face it, most agents (even though they may have been in the business for many years) don’t have the ability to write a contract without making a mistake by leaving something blank or checking the wrong box. Once she has her notes, she puts together an executive summary of the offer.

Here is the exact format we use:

BUYERS’ OFFER AS WRITTEN:
Purchase price – $435,000 (currently priced at $450,000)
$2,000 earnest deposit
Buyer is currently pre-approved for a Conventional loan with 20% down, from Union Home Mortgage
Closing and Possession date of Monday, Feb 29th.
10 days for home inspections
Buyer is asking for a one year limited home warranty from HMS at a cost of $449 to be paid by the seller at closing.
Buyers are asking for the media room chairs, TV, and audio equipment, TV above the bar, pool table, and basement fridge to stay with the property at no additional cost.

Then, Courtney also prepares a new Seller’s Estimate Proceeds Worksheet assuming the seller accepts the offer as written. This way, the sellers know exactly how much money they will receive from the sale of their house if they accept this offer.

Finally, Courtney emails the summary and the worksheet to Ron who looks them over and emails them to the sellers. In the email, he tells them to call him once they’ve had a chance to review the information.

If the sellers decide to counter back to the other agent, Ron makes the appropriate changes to the executive summary and then emails that to the buyers’ agent. It looks like this:

SELLERS’ COUNTER OFFER:
Purchase price – $448,000
$2,000 earnest deposit
Buyer is currently pre-approved for a Conventional loan with 20% down, from Union Home Mortgage
Closing by noon on Monday, Feb 29th with possession at 5:00
10 days for home inspections
Buyer is asking for a one year limited home warranty from HMS at a cost of $449 to be paid by the seller at closing.
Buyers are asking for the media room chairs, TV, and audio equipment, TV above the bar, pool table, and basement fridge to stay with the property at no additional cost.

BUYERS’ OFFER AS WRITTEN:
Purchase price – $435,000 (currently priced at $450,000)
$2,000 earnest deposit
Buyer is currently pre-approved for a Conventional loan with 20% down, from Union Home Mortgage
Closing and Possession date of Monday, Feb 29th.
10 days for home inspections
Buyer is asking for a one year limited home warranty from HMS at a cost of $449 to be paid by the seller at closing.
Buyers are asking for the media room chairs, TV, and audio equipment, TV above the bar, pool table, and basement fridge to stay with the property at no additional cost.

As you can see, Ron includes both the original offer information and the counter offer information with the terms that changed written in red. This way, if the buyers’ agent is not near a computer and just looking at this information on her phone, she can instantly understand what has changed and there in no miscommunication. The buyers’ agent can then call her buyers and discuss accepting the counter, or respond with new terms.

Ron will repeat this process with the sellers if the buyers come back with new terms.

This whole plan works really well too when you have multiple offers. You can use this Multiple Offers Comparison spreadsheet to present all the offers side-by-side.

multiple_offers

The seller would then either choose one to accept, or choose one to counter. Then your lead agent emails the executive summary of the offer to the buyers’ agent with the counter, being sure to write the changes in red as above.

So what about weekends?

Ron will text Courtney and ask if she’s in a place where she can put together the executive summary and the Seller’s Estimated Proceeds Worksheet. Oftentimes Ron will just wait until Courtney can get to it. But essentially, he is giving her the right of first refusal. It makes Courtney’s job easier if she knows what’s going on.

If an agreement is reached, Ron has Courtney make the appropriate changes in DotLoop or he has her put together a counter offer. It’s at this time that Courtney uses her notes to write an amendment or write into the counter offer any wording needed to fix the mistakes in the original contract. Of course, if the agent was nice enough to send the offer in DotLoop with the correct permission, Courtney can just fix everything right on the original contract since the buyers’ signatures are going to fall off anyway when she types in the new terms.

Now that you’ve seen how it’s done, let’s talk about why we do it this way.

There are three reasons:

First, we all know that we’re supposed to protect our lead agent’s time. If Ron stopped what he was doing every time he received an offer, we wouldn’t have much business. Ron’s biggest rock is getting more business. One of your primary roles is servicing the existing clients. And that’s what this system allows both of you to do.

Second, when you are in the know from the beginning, you are servicing the client at a higher level by knowing every aspect of that client’s file from beginning to end. Even if you are a transaction coordinator and your beginning is when the offer is received. In my opinion, being given a fully ratified contract is coming into the contract to close process near the beginning, not at the beginning.

Third, if your lead agent is copying you on all the communications back and forth between the clients and the buyers’ agent, then they get used to seeing your name and it makes the hand off that much easier. (If you don’t already have access to your lead agent’s email account, I suggest you discuss that with him or her and make it happen. I can’t tell you how many times this has come in handy when Ron will receive a phone call or email and not be able to respond right away so I will either do it for him or he will call me and dictate what he wants me to send for him out of his account.)

I think this is one of those of those things that is very easy to implement and once you and your agent get in the groove of this, I think you’ll both get a lot of value out of this system.

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Are you and your agent doing this already? Do you love it, or do you think it’s not the best use of your time? I’d love to see your comments below! Got questions? I’m available at egilbert AT kw DOT com.

 

2 Comments

  1. Gayle Sabol

    Great idea. Although I want to be the one to present all offers, I love that the Admin summarizes the terms for me so it can be easily communicated, even on a cell phone. Yes, I can attest to the fact that I have presented an offer without seeing the request for closing costs written at the bottom in the margin! Thank you!

    Reply
    1. Elizabeth (Post author)

      So true! An assistant’s time is best spent doing whatever she can to keep the agent’s day moving as seamlessly as possible.

      Reply

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