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Compass
200 Columbine St
Denver, CO 80206 -
Sallie Simmons
Most buyers think that once they lose a house, it’s over.
It’s not.
And right now, that misunderstanding is costing people homes.
Because what most people don’t realize is that deals fall apart all the time. Not occasionally. Not rarely. Constantly.
And if you’re not positioned when that happens, you’re starting over from scratch.
We are in a market where:
Those are not edge cases. That is everyday reality.
One of the biggest reasons I see deals fall apart is inspection.
Buyers and agents will write very specific inspection language to get a home under contract, and then once they are in, they try to renegotiate far beyond what they initially agreed to. Sellers push back. Deals collapse.
I see it constantly.
If you want to understand why homes are sitting longer right now, this ties directly into it. Read more about why homes are sitting in Denver.
If you want more context on how buyers should think about this market overall, this Denver home buyer guide breaks down the strategy.
And when that happens, the seller is left with two choices:
That is where the opportunity is.
A backup offer in real estate is a fully executed purchase contract that is accepted into a secondary position, allowing the buyer to automatically move into first position if the primary contract is terminated.
A backup offer is not a gamble.
It is not a long shot.
It is a fully executed, negotiated contract that sits in second position behind the primary contract.
If the first deal terminates, that backup offer steps into first position.
No relisting.
No scrambling.
No starting over.
Learn more about backup offers here- What is A Backup Offer and Should You Make One
If you want a full breakdown of how contracts, timelines, and contingencies work in situations like this, you can explore my buyer FAQ here.
If you are newer to the process, this Denver homebuyer FAQ answers the most common buyer questions.
For me, backup offers almost always come into play after we lose in a multiple-offer situation.
Not before.
Not by chasing homes that are already pending.
We write strong offers. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we don’t.
But if my buyers were serious about the home, we don’t just walk away and hope something else shows up.
We stay in position.
Because the reality is this:
You are not competing with the first offer anymore.
You are competing with what the seller does next if that deal falls apart.
At that point, the seller is not evaluating new offers from scratch. They are deciding whether to move forward with someone already in position or reopen the entire process.
That is the lane you are in.
If you are trying to compete without overpaying, this Denver buying guide explains what it actually takes to win.
They think:
“I didn’t get it. Let’s move on.”
Instead of:
“Is there still a path here?”
One of the best examples of this was with an investor client of mine about 10 years ago.
It was a deal in the $300s, and we were up against around 10 other offers. We did not win. In fact, I don’t even think we were in second position.
So we moved on.
We were already back out looking at other properties when I got a call a couple of days later.
The buyer who went under contract never delivered their earnest money within the contractual deadline. The deal was dead.
This is one of those moments where answering your phone matters.
We had to make a decision immediately. There was no time to think about it, no time to renegotiate, and no time to rebuild an offer.
But my client was ready.
We said yes, and the deal became ours.
Situations like this are also why I tell buyers to avoid some of the biggest missteps I see over and over. These common Denver buyer mistakes can absolutely cost you the house.
That opportunity did not come from luck.
If we had fully moved on mentally, or if my client was not ready to act, that deal would have gone to someone else.
This is not a one-off situation.
This is something I have seen happen over and over again across different markets and different types of buyers.
Just because you did not win the first time does not mean the opportunity is gone.
One of my first-time buyer clients was a young couple using an FHA loan, but they had a strong down payment and were fully qualified. At the time, FHA and VA loans were often frowned upon because of timelines and stricter appraisal requirements, so we knew we had to make the offer as strong as possible in other ways.
We had already lost out on several homes. I could not even tell you how many at that point. So when we wrote this one, we did everything we could to compete. We structured the offer with earnest money going hard after inspection, limited inspection to major items, included an appraisal gap, used an escalation clause, and pushed for the fastest closing their lender could handle.
We did not win.
But we stayed in position.
The buyers who got the home ended up losing it during inspection, and this is something I still see all the time.
Buyers and agents will write very specific inspection language to get a home under contract, and then once they are in, they push far beyond what they initially agreed to. Sellers push back. The deal falls apart.
This is one of the most common ways contracts terminate, and it is happening constantly in this market.
As a listing agent, I will often remind the other side what their contract actually said. Sometimes that gets things back on track. A lot of times it does not.
When that deal fell apart, my buyers were ready.
We stepped in and they got the home they thought they had already lost.
If you are a first-time buyer trying to understand how to stay competitive without making reckless decisions, this buyer game plan is a good place to start.
Most buyers think the process looks like this:
That is not how it actually works.
What really happens is this:
And when that happens, the seller has to make a decision quickly.
Do they go back on the market and start over?
Or do they move forward with someone who is already in position?
This is why understanding how contracts, timelines, and contingencies actually work matters so much. If you are not clear on that, you can miss opportunities like this entirely. You can get a better breakdown of how those pieces fit together here: your Denver home buying FAQ
For a more complete step-by-step overview, this Denver real estate FAQ guide walks through the full process.
There is a misconception that getting a home this way is just being in the right place at the right time.
It is not.
It is about:
The buyers who end up getting these homes are not the ones hoping something falls apart.
They are the ones who are prepared when it does.
If negotiation is part of what makes this work, this article on negotiation in a competitive Denver market adds more context.
They emotionally move on too fast.
They stop thinking about the house.
They are not ready when the call comes.
Or worse, they hesitate.
And in these situations, hesitation is what costs you the deal.
Because when a contract falls apart, the seller is not waiting around.
They are moving forward with whoever is ready.
I had another buyer who kept getting outbid in one of the most competitive markets I have ever seen.
They were a strong buyer with conventional financing, 20 percent down, and willing to go well over appraised value. But we kept losing to cash buyers and people throwing out numbers that were honestly hard to justify. Some of those offers were pushing close to $100,000 over.
It was one of those markets where being competitive still was not enough.
We wrote on a home the day before Easter and did not win. We were not even in second position. We were in third.
But I had built a good rapport with the listing agent, so I let her know we would absolutely be interested if anything changed.
What happened next is exactly why this strategy works.
The seller tried to push the winning buyer up to their escalated number, and that buyer walked. The agent then went to the second offer, and they had already decided they did not want the house anymore.
That is when my phone rang.
I was in the shower on Easter morning, recognized the number, and stepped out with shampoo still in my hair to answer it.
It was ours if we wanted it.
The only catch was that it was going to the top of our escalation clause.
And this is a big lesson.
Do not escalate higher than you are actually willing to go.
I called my clients, we talked it through quickly, and submitted a clean updated offer reflecting that number. We were under contract that same afternoon.
That is also why strategy matters more than emotion in this market. Some Denver neighborhoods are giving buyers more negotiation power right now, but you still have to know when to act.
At this point, you can probably see the pattern.
These deals do not happen because someone got lucky.
They happen because everything is already lined up.
There is no scrambling when the call comes in.
There is no renegotiating.
There is no delay.
It is already done.
If you are relocating and trying to make these decisions from a distance, this guide on buying a Denver home from out of state can help you get prepared before the right home comes back around.
The opportunity is there.
The call comes in.
And instead of moving forward, they pause.
They overthink it.
They start second guessing the decision they were already willing to make days before.
And in that moment, the deal goes to someone else.
Because when a contract falls apart, the seller is not waiting.
They are moving forward with whoever is ready.
A backup offer is not about hoping something goes wrong.
It is about making sure you are the next step if it does.
If it is a home you actually want, and you were already willing to compete for it, walking away completely is usually the mistake.
This is how you stay in the game without starting over.
And in a market where deals are falling apart as often as they are right now, that positioning matters more than ever.
If you want direct help building that strategy, start here for Denver home buying support or contact me through my main site.
In this market, the buyers who win are not always the ones with the highest offer. They are the ones who are still in position when everything else falls apart.
If you’re buying, selling, or moving to Denver and want to talk through your specific situation, feel free to reach out directly.
Call or text: 662.588.2420
Email:[email protected]
Compass
200 Columbine St
Denver, CO 80206
Sallie Simmons