Module 4 – Lesson 1 – Making an Offer on a Property (5 Min)

Are you wondering how you should make an offer on a property? What are the steps in making an offer on a property? We cover how to make an offer on a property in this lesson.

Summary of Key Points
– Must be in a verbal or written format directly to the property agent.
– Upon acceptance, advise your solicitor and mortgage broker
– Arrange to have the contract thoroughly checked
– If your contract is subject to a cooling-off period, ensure you conduct your searches (pest, building, strata, etc)
– Solicitor/agent organises the exchange of the contract of sale. Once exchanged, you are required to pay a deposit.

Did you know?
The first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer.
Buyer beware, as they say. Thankfully, buyer Mark Fraser was apparently aware of the fact that he was getting a broken laser pointer when he purchased it for $14.83 from eBay’s founder Pierre Omidyar in 1995.

Prefer reading? Here is a transcript of the video:

Hello and Welcome. This is Paul Pappas again from Mortgage Choice. So, you found the right property, and it’s not going to auction, which is fantastic property ticks all your boxes. It’s your dream home, and you want to go ahead and make an offer, but what do you do? How do you go about that process? Let’s have a bit of a chat!

Give you some guidance on that as well. So firstly, all offers that you make on the property should only be in a verbal or written format. So, in other words, yes, you can do a text. Yes, you can send an email. Of course, you can call the agent directly and make your offer over the phone or in person. It’s important for you to know that any offer that you make in either a verbal or a written format is not legally binding in the sense that until you sign a contract. And we’re certainly not recommending that you sign a contract at an early stage. You are not legally bound, so important for you to know that even if your verbal offer is accepted and it’s all verbal that you can pull out, and the other side can pull out as well.

So very important for you to know that any agreement that you might have in a verbal sense or text or email is not valid until a contract is signed and exchanged with deposits paid, and your legal representative will help you with that process as well. It’s also important for you to know that the agent that you’re negotiating with is actually not working with you for you. They’re working for the other side.

They’re working for the owner, and they’re being paid by the owner to firstly sell the property at the highest possible price that the owner is that is acceptable to the owner. So, they’re not working with you. They’re not working for you even though they might seem to be your best buddy and best friend.

So now be very conscious of those two very important things once your offer is accepted, it is important that you engage both your solicitor or conveyancer and ourselves to start finalising things for you have the solicitor or conveyancer thoroughly review the contract before you sign it to make sure that what you understand to be the property in terms of what it offers any conditions that you might like to impose in the contract or have agreed everything has to be in the contract. The contract must be satisfactory to you. And you’ve also got to make sure that there are no nasty clauses in that contract that aren’t acceptable to you, something that hasn’t been represented by this by the agent, but your solicitor or conveyor has picked up for you.

So very important for you to have that contract professionally reviewed and negotiated before you sign the contract. If your property is subject to a cooling-off period which is quite commonly is once you’ve agreed on price. There’s usually a five to ten-day cooling-off period, then certainly a range of inspections in terms of pest and building reports, and any council approvals also give us a chance to finalise the formal loan approval for you as well within that cooling-off period. Once that cooling-off period has expired, and you’ve done all your checks and balances, your contract has been satisfactory reviewed and negotiated by your solicitor.

We’ve obtained the formal loan approval for you. You are then required to pay the balance of the deposit now. At some stage previously, you may have been required to pay a 0.25% holding deposit, which is non-refundable, which effectively binds you to the property and allows you to commence the cooling-off period, but once all that has expired and you’re then in a position to sign the contract properly.

Pay the right deposit, and effectively that’s when you take ownership of the property, and all your negotiations are complete, and you’ve commenced that process of now settling on the property later as always.
We’re here to help you. We help a lot of our clients with the negotiation process of buying property. What to do? How to go about it, and so forth. So please reach out to us. We are here to help you. Thank you again!

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