Here is an excerpt from the email Marty sent our way.

“….we have been looking for our 2nd rental for a month or two now. We are looking for a 3 bedroom bungalow ($200,000 to $220,000 price range) and we have viewed about 20 houses in the last month. When we find the right house, we plan to add a 2 bedroom LEGAL apartment in the basement, spending around $20,000 on renovations.
So… finally, last week we found one that worked (mathematically) so we put in an offer. The seller wanted $229,000 for this tiny little 900 sqft bungalow and had been on the market for over 120 days with NO offers. Naturally, we felt we had some leverage under the circumstances, so we decided to low-ball an offer at $205,000. Well, to our shock, the guy refused our offer, and actually informed us that he wouldn’t budge on the price and was prepared to ‘sit on it’ for as long as it took. So we decided to walk away from it.
We were a little disappointed until Sunday we found ANOTHER house listed for $228,000 and the people seemed a little desperate to sell because they had already listed for awhile with one agent, and then re-listed recently with a different agent. We offered $213,000 and after 24hrs they countered with $226,000. We were annoyed that this person decided to counter with such a high offer and were LOSING confidence as time passed. We decided to shorten our closing date and offer $218,000.
Well…guess what….the seller countered again with the same $226,000!!!!! Yeah, it was pretty frustrating to see someone trying to sell a house that is overpriced (in my opinion) and they wouldn’t even budge with their 2nd counter offer. So…me and my wife decided to walk away from this deal AGAIN! So we told our agent that we were walking from the deal, and she told their agent. Then, 20 minutes later, our agent calls us back and says “The seller wants to reconsider the previous offer we made because they were upset that we decided to walk away from the deal” YEAH! Can you believe that? So…nothing is set in stone yet but they said they would like an extension on the last offer we made so they can think about it! I have a feeling that we will be making a deal in the next day or so.
So here we have a seller who was trying to play ‘hard ball’ with us but really didn’t have a leg to stand on. Now, because of what has happened, the leverage is ENTIRELY in our hands! Honestly, we were willing to negotiate with these people until they got two stubborn with their counter offers. Now we are NOT willing to negotiate. We probably would have gone as high as $222,000 if they were willing to be reasonable at the time, but now we are not going to budge on our $218,000. So…we will se what happens in the next 24 hrs.”

Way to go Marty, I hope it works out for you!

- Nick