Understanding the Buying Process
Most buyers take between 2 and 6 weeks to build confidence and collect information about prevailing market conditions before making their first offer.
This process involves:
- Clarifying their own needs in a home
- Determining and rationalizing their financial limits
- Educating themselves as to market pricing for various neighbourhoods
- Educating themselves as to the costs and benefits of various home features (e.g. renovations, amenities, appliances)
- Obtaining local knowledge of their chosen neighbourhood
By the end of this process, most buyers know:
- How much they are capable of paying
- What neighbourhood do they want to live in
- What basic structural characteristics must be possessed by the home (e.g. number of bedrooms, size of the lot, size of kitchen)
- What features are considered “nice to have”, but nonessential
While buyers vary somewhat in terms of the specificity of their buying criteria, most potential buyers of your home will have conducted a detailed analysis.
By the time a typical buyer is ready to make an offer, they will have seen all of the existing properties for sale in your neighbourhood.
Since they will have the existing inventory exhausted, they will be waiting to see only new listings as they arrive on the market.
Because of this fact, the first few weeks after listing are the most critical since the number of prepared buyers who will see your home will be at its peak. That is why so many vendors often come to realize that the first offer is usually the best offer.
