Can a Seller Turn Down My Offer Because I Have Not Sold My Home Yet?

It is an offer that says: "I will buy this house, as long as I sell mine." It is called a sale contingency. A contingency is a condition. If the condition is not met, the contract lets you walk away under the terms that were agreed on paper.

For you, it is peace of mind. For the seller, it is something else.

As risk. The seller sees two sales tied together: theirs depends on yours, and yours depends on a buyer no one has met yet. If your home does not sell, theirs falls through, and they start over with weeks lost.

When another offer comes in without that condition, the comparison is easy to make. That is why an offer that depends on a sale sometimes loses.

And sometimes it works. It depends on the house, the seller and the moment: whether there are other offers or not, whether the seller is in a hurry or not, and most of all, where your sale stands. There is no rule that fits every case, and anyone who promises you one is guessing.

There are things you can put in order before you make an offer. None of them guarantees anything, but all of them take some uncertainty away from the seller:

• Your sale is already moving. A home that is already listed, or one that already has an accepted offer, tells the seller they are not counting on something that may never come.
• The closing dates talk to each other. The closing date is the day the papers are signed and the keys change hands. If the date of your sale and the date of your purchase fit on the same calendar, the seller can see it.
• Your lender has already looked at your situation. A pre-approval letter is a document from the lender saying how much they might lend you, subject to their final review. What you can buy is decided by the lender, with your papers, and not by me.
• The conditions are clear on paper. How much time you have to sell, what happens if it does not happen, what can be done in that case. What is not written down turns into an argument.

That list is not a formula for winning. It is a way to keep your offer from depending on the seller having faith in you.

When the sale and the purchase are planned together, you come to that offer knowing where your home stands: whether there is an accepted offer, whether showings are still to come, what day you close. You put that on the table instead of asking to be believed.

And sometimes the plan says something else. That it makes more sense to sell first and make an offer afterward, with no condition. Or that the date of the purchase should be negotiated in a different way. That is not decided in the middle of an offer, with another buyer standing by and the clock running. It is decided before, on paper.

What I see often: people find the house first and build the plan afterward. When it is done the other way around, the offer arrives with answers already in it.

An offer that depends on the sale of your home is not forbidden, and it is not a bad idea. It is an offer the seller is going to weigh as risk, and your job, with my help, is to make it weigh less.

If you do not yet know where your sale stands, that is the first step, and it is taken before you fall in love with a house.

Where will your sale stand when you find the house you want?

Send me the address of your home and the link to the one you liked on WhatsApp and I will tell you how your offer would look and what it is missing so the seller reads it as less risky. No commitment, nothing to sign.

I am Veronica Yeary, a REALTOR in Dallas-Fort Worth. I sell your home and find the next one with a single plan, and the whole transaction is with me, start to finish.

469-441-8890 · call, text or WhatsApp · veronica@veronicayeary.com