Use real closing behavior to decide if you should counter or sign
You are deciding whether to take the offer in hand or push for more and risk losing momentum. In Santa Barbara, CA, I recommend you judge the offer against what buyers have actually been paying relative to asking, not against your starting number.
One number to ground your decision is this recent offers landed about 97.1% of asking last month. A typical sale took 60 days, and supply stood at 3.19 months.
That matters because if you are getting a serious offer near what the market has been supporting, rejecting it for a small gap can be expensive in time. Some metrics were not reported for this period. Even without every detail, the recent pattern of buyers paying slightly under asking tells me that clean, near-market offers deserve a fast, strategic response, especially if your goal is to control your timeline.
Compare the net, not the headline price weigh the offered price against contingencies and timing, then decide what you must improve in a counter. If the offer is already near what the market has been paying, protect your leverage by countering tightly instead of reopening the entire deal. Keep your move plan realistic, because a typical sale took 60 days last month, and delays add risk even when the offer looks strong.
