Read Time: 4 minutes.
Your buyer's finally found the one.
They’ve seen it twice, taken their builder mate through, and the agent’s nudging them to make an offer.
But they haven’t priced it properly, picked their conditions, or planned how to respond to a counter offer.
They’re about to climb a mountain without ropes.
"Fail to prepare, prepare to fail".
Most buyers don’t realise it yet, but this pre-offer window is their best chance to save money, reduce risk, and take control.
If your buyer stumbles at the make an offer stage, it’s not just emotional damage... it’s financial too:
Here’s what we see every weekend:
Buyers rush into making offers based on the CV, a ‘homes.co.nz’ estimate, or what a mate reckons.
They use basic conditions like LIM and finance, not realising those give them very little room to walk away if the property isn’t right.
They skip the offer letter.
They don’t set an expiry.
And they treat the contract like a formality instead of a negotiation.
They don’t know better — and they don’t know they can do better.
Here’s the pre-offer framework we teach our first-home buyers (for free) at HouseMe Legal.
You can steal this.
Use real comps from the past 3–6 months.
Match suburbs, specs (e.g. 3 bed, 1 bath in Avondale), and build a simple spreadsheet:
Property value is subjective.
This means each buyer (and seller) will hold a different value towards each property.
Forget the CV.
Forget online estimates.
Value is subjective, and confidence comes from doing your own numbers.
Help your buyer pick their final number before they submit anything — right down to the last $100.
This makes it clear they’ve hit their limit and gives the offer credibility.
Standard conditions (finance, LIM, building) are narrow and technical.
If something goes wrong outside of those, your client may be stuck.
That’s why we recommend using due diligence whenever possible.
It gives full flexibility to exit the deal for any reason — quiet neighbours included.
We have a cheat sheet you can send them for this.
Buyers who write a simple, genuine note about why they love the home do stand out.
Especially to sellers who’ve raised a family there and want it going to someone similar.
We’ve got a template for this that works.
A sharp expiry (say, 4pm Friday) puts pressure on the seller to respond before the next open home round.
It’s a small tactic with outsized impact.
Give the seller at least 48 hours to respond.
If the offer’s rejected, don’t panic.
We treat it like a rep in the gym: back to the start, run the process again.
More prepared, less emotional, and no legal bill.
We made this flow chart for any advisor to show their first-home buyer:
Download Our Pre-Offer Flow Chart Here
