Key Takeaways
- You can be fair and honest in your treatment, lighten your buyers’ feelings and concerns, and
still walk away with the best deal. - Respond quickly and openly to your all parties interested in putting in an offer on your home.
- Explain the situation and make a counter offer.
- The most common way of handling counter offers when you have multiple prospects is to ask
each party to respond with their highest and best offer by a certain date/time, along with a pre-
qualification letter. - Keep the doors of communication open with all prospective buyers.
If you receive multiple offers on your home, it’s a good thing. It shows there is strong interest. But it also presents potential dilemmas on your part and on the part of the buyers. You can be certain it will be upsetting or, at least, disappointing to your prospective buyers. They may feel they are competing against one another. Some may even drop out of the running.
But there are precautionary actions you can take to be fair and honest in your treatment, lighten your buyers’ feelings and concerns, and walk away with the best deal.
Respond quickly and openly and – being as pleasant as possible – explain the situation in an email or letter to each of your buyers and make a counter offer. Counter offers can be approached several ways. Here are three to choose from that I recommend:
- Thank each buyer for their interest, tell them you’ve received multiple offers and that in order to be fair and respectful to everyone, ask them if they would like to respond with their highest and best offer by a certain date/time, along with a pre-qualification letter. This is the most common way of handling multiple offers.
- The second way relates to multiple offers where one or more buyers offer cash but are not the highest bidders, or the cash buyers’ terms are not as good as the other bids. You could go back to the cash buyer with the highest offer and, once again, being as polite as possible, tell them you will accept their offer if they meet your price and terms. Cash is king, after all; there’s no valid reason to argue with or be offended by that.
- Another option is to accept the offer with the largest down payment. This lowers your risk of the buyer not being approved for the loan. Again, respond to all of your buyers explaining the situation, tell them you’ve accepted another offer, and thank them for their interest.
A Few Words of Caution
Every situation has its nuances. A buyer may overbid, making an offer way over the asking price and then try to use inspection reports as a way of getting you to knock down the price. Be prepared. Keep the doors of communication open with all prospective buyers.
Regardless of the scenario, do not sign any contract until you have agreed to the terms. Once you sign the contract you are bound to that offer. Sign away if you are prepared to accept those terms.
