Selling home/home inspection/buyers demands

Can't you just say no? Is the market so soft you can't find other, more reasonable buyers?

Just say no or say "I'll knock $500.00 off of the price of the house and we'll call it good". We had to do this when we sold ours I think we knocked $1300.00 off because they wanted a radon unit in the basement.
One thing we did was hire our own inspector to look the place over before we put in on the market so we would know what kinds of things we might run into.

In my professional opinion the GFIs and smoke detectors, which may be required by code, are reasonable requests.

A lot of the time this sort of nit-picking is actually the work of the buyer's agent. Many realtors "coast" through the process, so when it comes to final arrangements prior to sale, the agent turns up the heat on the seller to prove to the buyer they're earning their commission.

I've experienced this on both sides of a transaction. Even as a buyer, I had an agent tell me they thought the seller should do A and B and C before we settled. I told him, "no--not worth the hassle because we're satisfied with everything. We don't need their last drop of blood to close this deal."

Buying or selling a home is no different from a military battle; both sides take casualties despite winner/loser status.

Here in New York, we usually don’t even go to contract until after the inspection has been done. Anything that needs to be worked on gets worked out and included in the contract. If either side is not satisfied, you don’t make the deal.

I agree - in my less than professional opinion.

Plant a tree too.

The rest of the stuff is a negotiation.

When selling our 2nd home in 1999 and buying present home their agent waited until we were there at closing and hit us with “we want you to remove all the ivy from the back wall of our house”. Upon that and being inexperienced My wife, Realtor and I went to house we were selling and spent 2 hours or so pulling it off the wall. I retrospect we would now have said NO and moved on if needed. That being said, I agree with Peegoo, replacing smoke alarms is not unreasonable. Personally I might agree to pulling the dishwasher out, checking for mold but tell them they will have to get a new dishwasher if necessary.

The buyers are going through our agent.  He is going to take on some of the cost of the dishwasher. 

We will be going through thus again within a year. You have my sympathies. This too shall pass.

Our condo was built in 1992. There is an unused GFI in the garage that didn't pass inspection (apparently didn't trip), so they piggybacked the 2 additional GFIs on to the repair. This couple apparently own or owned a hotel somewhere out of state, I suspect their demands are driven by that experience. Like Rob inferred, we're ready to just get this done and move on. We both hate the process of showing and selling. We got very close to our asking price so a little concession is ok, I just wish we had taken a "as-is" approach to the sale in the first place. And the biggest thing that bugs me is the "leak" on the dishwasher. It almost makes me wonder if during the test cycle one of the buyers deliberately poured water on the floor to make it look like a leak. The home inspector lingered long after everyone was gone and was very chatty. It was clear he was annoyed by them and stated they were tag teaming him during the inspection with interruptions. Whatever.

Rant over.

Ours is a similar situation. Originally from Ohio, and followed our kids to Austin. Our first grandchild arrived last May. I do have a Michigan connection - working for a company based in St. Joseph.

My wife and I are realtors, me part time. I've been through plenty of negotiations based on the results of home inspection. The key word here is "structurally or mechanically deficient". The dishwasher leak needs to be addressed, the blinds no. Mold has become a big scare these days, and home inspectors love to put the fear of mold in people's heads, even just by stating that there may be mold due wet conditions caused by a leak. It complicates what would normally be a straightforward repair. A wet spot was found in the ceiling of an alcove when we sold our old Victorian. The roof repair was quoted at about $500, but because the inspector suggested there "might" be mold due to the moisture, the buyers wanted $12000 off to pull down the whole ceiling and fix any mold. We knew there wasnt because we knew the leak had just happened but we couldnt prove it, so we had to negotiate.
That's real estate for ya.

We bought and sold this summer and fall. In both cases we had binding agreements by the time we closed. Also, here the seller doesn't have to be at closing.

The people were bought from were not out the evening before closing. We gave them the option to pay a penalty but the scrambled to get out.

The buyers on our house wanted us to pay for a new range because it made noise when the oven was running... the same fan sound it made from day one. Even though it took 3 months to get the first offer, we just said no. They bought anyway.