Jon Burke

It sounds like you're bidding on homes that have hit the market recently and have a lot of competition driving the price up outside your budget. The market is definitely bouncing back from 2025 and you're competing with buyers from last year who decided not to buy for one reason or another. So the key to getting a house at, or below, its list price w/o having to outbid any competition is to look at homes that have been on the market for at least 45 days or more. These have been sitting for potentially a few reasons, and you'll want to work with your agent to determine if its just over priced, or if there's some flaw or physical reason it hasn't sold and if you can either live with that (weird location, next to power lines, whatever) or fix it yourself, or if its a deal breaker and move on. It takes a bit more work, but deals can be found if you are flexible on certain things. Everything else mentioned is good, but those are standard table stakes terms. Everyone is pre-qualified, everyone offers 3% earnest money, a LOT of people will make a non-contingent offer....these are not differentiators if the top 5 offers are all including them.

Not anymore. It used to be set by the seller and then typically split, but that changed in 2024. Seller negotiates with their listing agent for their side (you'll probably never know what the listing agent was paid), and the buyer negotiates with their buyer agent. There are details to iron out on the buy-side around if they buyer can pay cash separate from the home sale (meaning, you'd bring more cash to the closing) or if it has to be rolled up into your offer and 'paid by the seller' and the funds come out of the sellers proceeds. As far as 'fair' goes....all the seller wants its the best possible NET sales, meaning, how much they put in their pocket after everything is said and done. So if a seller has two offers, one offer pays the buyer agent 2.5% and the other is a 3% commission, but the 3% commission offer is $45K more...if that puts more money in their pocket depsite the higher buyer commission, they'll still take the 2nd offer.