What is this page about?
How a seller compares offers as complete proposals rather than as prices, and what happens between acceptance and possession: the inspection response, the appraisal, title and the association file, financing, the final walkthrough, the closing figures and the handover.
Who is it for?
Owners about to receive offers, owners with several in front of them, and owners already under contract who want to know what the coming weeks will ask of them.
What is the most important conclusion?
Price is one line of an offer. The net, the buyer's capacity to perform, the rights the buyer keeps and the dates all sit underneath it, and an offer can win on price and lose on every other line. The parts have to be compared together, in writing.
What should you do next?
Write the offers out side by side before answering any of them. After acceptance, keep the contract and its dates somewhere you can see them, and assemble the property records and the handover before either becomes urgent.
An offer is a proposal, not a price
Before an offer arrives, the question is how the market will answer the property. Once one arrives the question changes: which of these proposals is most likely to produce the result you are actually after, and at what risk.
A high price can rest on a large concession, on financing nobody has examined, on an appraisal the available evidence may not support, on a contingency that depends on a sale somewhere else, or on a possession date that costs more than the difference between the offers. A lower price can be the stronger proposal when the net is cleaner, the buyer's ability to close is documented, and the dates fit what you are doing next.
None of that is visible in the top line. It becomes visible when the offers are set out next to each other.
The economic lines under the price
The offered price is the first line, not the conclusion. Each of the following changes what actually reaches the seller, and several of them are negotiable within the offer itself.
What leaves before the net
05- Brokerage compensation, as this particular offer proposes to handle it.
- Concessions and credits the buyer is asking the seller to pay, together with the separate question of whether the buyer's loan programme permits them at all.
- Title and closing charges as the offer allocates them, which is a negotiated allocation and is not always made the same way twice.
- Payoffs, prorations and any assessment, which belong to the property rather than to the offer.
- Repair exposure the offer implies. It is not a number yet, and it is still worth estimating before the offer is accepted rather than after.
Terms that behave like money
03- Earnest money: the amount, when and how it is delivered, who holds it, and which contract rights can return it to the buyer. A large earnest money figure is not the same thing as money a seller gets to keep.
- Inclusions and exclusions: what the buyer believes is coming with the house, and whether any of it carries value, a lien, or a transfer requirement of its own.
- The closing date and the possession date, which are separate decisions and are frequently negotiated separately.
Cost of Selling a Home in Colorado works through each of those lines and how a net estimate is built. The estimate is worth having before the first offer arrives, because an offer is easier to read against a number you already trust.
Ability to perform is part of the offer
Every offer is a promise about the future. What separates two of them is the evidence already attached to the promise.
A seller does not underwrite the loan, and neither does a broker. The lender does that, and it keeps doing it until the money moves. What a seller is reading is narrower and still useful: how much of this buyer's ability has already been examined by someone whose job it is, and how much of it is still assertion.
What to look at, by type of offer
The categories overlap in practice. The point of separating them is that each one fails in a different way.
Cash
03- Proof of funds, and whether those funds are available now or sit inside something that has to be sold, released or transferred first.
- Who is buying: an individual, an entity, a trust. Authority to sign is a real question, and it belongs to the title company and to counsel rather than to a broker.
- Which rights the buyer has kept. Cash removes the lender. By itself it does not remove an inspection right, an appraisal, or a right to terminate.
Financed
05- Loan type and down payment, and whether the property type is compatible with that loan.
- How recent the preapproval is, and whether income, assets and credit have actually been reviewed or merely stated.
- Whether the lender is reachable and communicates. This matters more in practice than it ought to in theory.
- How the offer treats the appraisal, and whether the buyer has funds available if the appraisal lands under the contract price.
- Which concessions are requested, and whether the loan programme allows them in that form and at that size.
Dependent on another transaction
03- What has to happen elsewhere: a home to sell, a closing to complete, a fund or a trust to release.
- How far along it is, and what evidence exists for that rather than what has been described.
- What rights the seller holds, and when they become available, if the dependency does not resolve.
Read the rights the buyer keeps, not the count
Contingencies are not a score. Two offers can carry the same number of them and be nothing alike, because what matters is how broad each right is, how long it stays open, and what the buyer has already produced to make its resolution likely.
The contract in front of you governs. In a Colorado brokerage transaction that is normally the current Commission approved form, and that form is revised from time to time: names, structure and dates all change. The version used in your transaction is the one to read, and the Division of Real Estate publishes the current forms.
This page therefore names no deadline and no day count. A page that describes what the form says today becomes wrong quietly, without anybody noticing which sentence stopped being true.
Where a buyer's rights usually sit
The current form and the negotiated terms decide which of these exists in a given transaction, how broad it is, and how long it lasts. Read them in the contract, not in a list.
Investigation
04- Inspection and general property investigation.
- Insurance: whether the buyer can obtain coverage on terms they will accept, which in parts of Boulder County is a genuine question rather than a formality.
- Association documents, and metropolitan district or shared infrastructure obligations where they apply.
- Survey, boundary and off record matters, where the buyer has reserved them.
Money and title
04- Loan terms and loan availability, which are not the same right.
- Appraisal.
- The title commitment and the recorded exceptions.
- The sale of an existing home, or another dependent transaction.
Review by somebody else
02- Attorney review, where the offer includes it.
- Entity, trust, corporate or third party approval, where the buyer requires it.
Dates are terms, and they can be worth more than a price difference
A closing date and a possession date are negotiated separately and can be moved separately. What they cost a particular seller depends on what that seller has to do next.
The dates in the offer
03- The closing date.
- The possession date and time, which is a separate decision from closing and is frequently a separate paragraph.
- Any period of occupancy after closing, and on what terms: rent, deposit, insurance, utilities, maintenance, damage and access.
The dates in your own life
03- When the replacement property is available, and whether the two transactions can be lined up or have to overlap.
- What has to be moved and how long moving it actually takes: animals, vehicles, an aircraft, art, wine, equipment, shop or business contents.
- Entity, trust, probate, relocation or tax timing, each of which belongs with the professional who handles it rather than with the negotiation.
Write the comparison down
Comparing several contracts from memory does not work. The terms are not parallel, the differences are not all in the same places, and the offer that was presented most enthusiastically is the one that stays in mind.
The method needs nothing but a sheet of paper: one row for each thing that matters to you, one column for each offer, and the same question asked of every column. What it produces is not a winner. It produces a visible set of differences, which is what a decision needs and what a stack of contracts will not give you on its own.
The comparison never replaces the contract, and nothing in it is binding. It makes the contracts legible next to each other before one of them is signed.
Rows worth having
A starting point rather than a form. The rows that matter to a particular sale come out of the seller's own objective, and a row that does not matter should be struck rather than filled in.
Money
05- Price.
- Estimated net to the seller, calculated the same way for every column.
- Earnest money, and the conditions under which it can be returned.
- Concessions, credits and how compensation is handled.
- Inclusions and exclusions.
Certainty
06- Financing or proof of funds, and how much of it has actually been examined.
- Down payment.
- How the appraisal is treated.
- How the inspection is structured.
- A sale contingency or another dependent transaction.
- The largest unresolved risk in that offer, written out in one sentence. If the sentence is hard to write, that is itself the finding.
Fit
03- Closing date and possession.
- How the buyer and the buyer's broker have communicated so far, which is weak evidence and is not no evidence.
- How well the offer serves what you are trying to accomplish. This is the row the other rows exist to inform.
A counteroffer is a new proposal
Countering is not editing. What goes back is a fresh proposal, and the offer it answers is generally no longer sitting there waiting to be accepted. Whether an earlier offer can be revived, whether another can be held as a backup, and how the listing status is handled are contract, brokerage and MLS questions with specific answers, and they are worth asking before the counter goes out rather than afterwards.
Decide first which terms are essential, which have a price attached, and which exist only to reduce risk. Then work out what the counter does to the buyer's financing, what happens if it is accepted as written, and when it expires.
Enthusiasm expressed on a phone call is not a term. Only the signed document is.
What acceptance actually starts
The usual order rather than a rule. Each item belongs to somebody, each has a date attached in the contract, and several of them run at the same time.
The calendar takes over
The negotiation stops being a conversation. Every date in the contract belongs to a party, and the consequence of missing one is written into the same document.
Inspection and property investigation
The buyer examines the property and may make a request under the contract. The seller decides how to answer it, within the rights each side holds at that point.
Title, association and district review
The title commitment and the association or district file are produced and reviewed, largely on other people's schedules rather than on the seller's.
Appraisal
Where the buyer is financing, the lender will usually order an appraisal. The appraiser works for the lender.
Financing continues
Underwriting keeps going after every other item looks settled. It is not finished until the money moves.
Walkthrough and closing figures
The buyer confirms condition and any agreed work. The seller reviews the settlement figures, ideally before the signing appointment rather than at it.
Signing, funding, recording, possession
Separate events, in an order the contract and the closing process set. They are not one moment and are not interchangeable words.
Which part of that is the seller's
Usually: deliver the documents the contract requires, provide access, respond to inspection, title, appraisal and association matters through the contract's own process rather than around it, complete any agreed work, keep the property maintained and insured, and prepare closing and possession.
Everyone else's work belongs to them. The inspector, the appraiser, the lender, the title company, the association and any attorney each reach their own conclusions, and none of those conclusions is a broker's to supply or to soften.
How a Home Sale Works sets out the stages before this one, and Preparing Your Home to Sell covers the condition and record work that makes this stretch shorter.
Understand the request before answering it
An inspection produces a report. What reaches the seller is not the report, it is a request made under the contract, and reading the two as the same document is the most common error at this stage. The request is a proposal. It is not an itemised bill.
Before answering, establish what was actually found, whether it was already known and already disclosed, and whether it touches safety, function, insurability or financing. Those four behave differently from preference items, because they can decide whether any buyer can complete a purchase rather than only whether this one wants to.
Then the practical questions. What would it cost. Is a contractor available inside the time the contract allows. Which rights does the buyer still hold. Is there other interest in the property, and how real is it.
Five ways to answer, and what each one costs
Which of these is available depends on the contract, the lender and the parties. None of them is automatically the right answer, and a single response often mixes more than one.
The options
05- Repair. The seller keeps the price and controls the contractor and the scope, and takes on the scheduling, quality, access, permit and completion risk that comes with doing the work under a deadline.
- Credit or concession. The buyer takes over the work and the seller's net falls by the agreed amount. The lender may cap the credit, restrict its form, or decline it.
- Price reduction. Simpler to document, and it hands the buyer less cash at closing than a permitted concession of the same size would. It also changes what the appraisal has to support.
- Escrow or holdback. Useful when the problem is timing rather than money, and available only when the closing company, the lender, the contract and both parties all permit it. It cannot be assumed into existence.
- Decline, or narrow the request. A seller may say no, or say less. What follows depends on the rights the buyer still holds, which in some cases include ending the transaction.
Give the appraiser facts, and nothing else
Where the buyer is financing, the lender will usually require an appraisal, and the appraiser is engaged by the lender rather than by either party to the sale. That independence is the whole point of the exercise, and it is not something a seller wants to erode even when eroding it would be convenient.
What a seller can properly do is make the property easy to appraise accurately. Organised, verifiable information is welcome. Pressure, argument and anything that is not true are not, and both appraisers and brokers carry obligations here that sit above any single transaction.
What Your Home Is Worth explains why an appraisal and a broker's opinion of value are different instruments serving different purposes.
What is worth having ready
About the property
04- Plans, permits, and how the finished space is measured and counted.
- Improvement dates and scope, with the records that prove them.
- Architect, builder and material information where the construction is part of the argument for the price.
- Site facts: land, view, access, water, well, septic, association, wildfire mitigation, historic status, and hangar or airport arrangements where they apply.
About the market
02- Comparable sales that are genuinely comparable, with the differences described rather than left out.
- Anything about the transaction itself that the appraiser is entitled to receive, delivered through the proper channel rather than in conversation.
If the appraisal comes in below the contract price
This is not one situation. The paths available depend on what the contract says and on what each party can actually do, and they usually include some combination of the buyer bringing additional funds, the seller reducing the price, the two meeting somewhere between, other terms moving to absorb the difference, a reconsideration of value requested through the lender's own process on factual grounds, or the contract ending under rights the parties already hold.
The time to think about this is when the offer is accepted, not when the number arrives. A buyer's stated willingness to pay above an appraisal means something only when it is written into enforceable terms and the funds to do it exist.
Pricing Your Home for Sale covers the relationship between a list price and the evidence an appraiser will be working from. Where a property is architectural, or otherwise has little comparable evidence standing behind it, the luxury home selling strategy guide covers how that argument is built and documented.
Title work happens whether the seller looks at it or not
A title commitment sets out what is recorded against the property and what the title company will and will not insure. It is reviewed inside the contract's own process, and interpreting it is work for the title professional or an attorney rather than for a broker or an owner.
What surfaces is rarely dramatic and is frequently old: a loan that was paid but never released, an easement nobody remembered, a covenant that restricts something the current owner has been doing for years, a boundary that does not agree with the fence, a right of first refusal, a conservation or water interest, or a signing authority question inside an estate, a trust or an entity.
Looking at your own title early does not remove the buyer's rights. It removes the surprise, and the same fact costs more in the last week of a transaction than it does in the first.
The association and district file
Where an association or a metropolitan district is involved, its paperwork becomes part of the transaction, and it is produced on the association's schedule rather than on the seller's.
What tends to be asked for
06- Governing documents, rules, and any amendment in progress.
- Budget, reserves and the assessment history.
- Insurance, and what it does and does not cover at the unit line.
- Litigation, special assessments and anything else pending.
- Status letters and transfer paperwork.
- For aviation property, the airfield's own documents and any access, hangar or use agreement that travels with the property.
A preapproval is not an approval
The lender goes on evaluating the buyer, the property, the appraisal, the title and the insurance until the money moves. Things change inside that window: a buyer opens a credit line, a programme condition surfaces, an underwriter asks for one more document.
Certain properties raise their own lending questions, and it is worth knowing which of them apply to yours before an offer is chosen rather than after an unfamiliar lender has started work. Acreage and unusual land value, wells and septic systems, accessory or unpermitted space, condominium and association eligibility, wildfire exposure and insurability, mountain access, historic or conservation restrictions, hangars and aviation improvements, and heavily customised construction all belong on that list.
The practical consequence for a seller is narrow and worth stating plainly. Do not make an irreversible move, purchase or financial commitment on the strength of a verbal reassurance. Watch the contractual milestones, and take the status from the parties whose job it is to give it.
The walkthrough is about condition, not a second inspection
The contract commonly gives the buyer a chance to confirm the property's condition and any agreed work shortly before closing. It is not a fresh opportunity to renegotiate the price, and condition still matters, because what goes wrong at this stage is ordinary rather than exotic: agreed work unfinished or undocumented, an included item removed, an excluded item left behind, damage done while moving, a utility shut off early, a system nobody could demonstrate because the power was already off.
So maintain the property until it stops being yours. Finish agreed work on time and keep the receipts and the permits. Take what you agreed to take and leave what you agreed to leave, checked against the contract rather than against memory. Keep the utilities available as required. If something fails at the last minute, report it through the transaction rather than hoping nobody opens that door.
Read the closing figures before the signing appointment
The settlement figures come through the closing process, and a question is far easier to resolve in advance than at a table with everybody waiting.
Check the sale price, the loan and lien payoffs, compensation as agreed, every concession and credit, the title and closing charges, the prorations for taxes, dues and rent, any assessment, any repair escrow, the net figure, and how the money is being delivered. Check the names and the vesting, and the entity or trust details where the seller is not an individual. Cost of Selling a Home in Colorado explains what each of those lines is and why it is there.
Signing, funding, recording, closing and possession are five events
They are used interchangeably in conversation and they are not interchangeable in fact. Which one has happened decides what a seller may do next.
What each one means
05- Signing: the parties execute the documents the transaction requires.
- Funding: the money is received and disbursed as the closing requires.
- Recording: the deed and the other documents are recorded with the county.
- Closing: the conditions of the contract and of the closing process have been completed.
- Possession: the buyer takes the property, at the date and time the contract sets, which is frequently not the same moment as any of the above.
The practical rule that follows is one sentence long. Do not release keys, gate codes, alarm administration, remotes or access on the strength of having signed, if the transaction requires something else to happen first.
The handover, assembled before closing week
This is the part everybody leaves until last and the part a new owner remembers. It is also far easier to do calmly in advance than on the day.
Access and control
06- Keys, and how many of each.
- Garage and gate remotes.
- Alarm and camera administration, transferred rather than shared.
- Smart home accounts and the permissions attached to them.
- Mailbox, community, private road, airport and hangar access.
- Passwords and codes, moved by some means other than email, and changed by the new owner afterwards.
Systems and service
03- Manuals, warranties, and who has been servicing what.
- The specialty systems in particular: roof, HVAC, boiler, generator, solar, pool, well, septic, irrigation, elevator, security, hangar door.
- Maintenance schedules, emergency shutoffs, and how the awkward things are actually operated.
Property and agreements
05- What is included and what is excluded, matched against the contract.
- Association and district contacts.
- Road, ditch, water, airport and shared infrastructure contacts.
- Tenant, caretaker, staff or vendor transitions where they apply.
- Any obligation that survives closing, including a post closing occupancy arrangement.
Common questions from offer to closing
Bring the offer, not just the price
Bring what is actually in front of you: the offers or the contract, what you are trying to accomplish, your current estimate of net, and any date you cannot move. The comparison is only useful once it is about your sale.
