How to Get & Handle Multiple Offers

How To Get (And Handle) Multiple Offers on Your Home

Multiple offer situations are very exciting for sellers. All of your hard work and careful strategy has paid off and now more than one buyer wants your property! It’s almost certain that you’ll get your asking price, and very likely more than asking. So, how do you set yourself up for multiple offers and how do you best handle them?

BEGIN SHOWINGS THE RIGHT DAY OF THE WEEK
If you allow showings too early in the week, you may get an offer before all motivated buyers have viewed your property. If you allow showings to begin on Thursday or Friday, it's reasonable to ask any interested party to wait through the weekend before responding to their offer. If you allow showings early in the week and receive an offer too early, the interested party may not wait through the weekend for a response, so you could miss out on potential offers, or miss out on the first offer.
DON’T GIVE UP TOO MUCH INFORMATION:
When buyers hear that there are already offers on a property, they will often choose to skip viewing it because they don’t want to be disappointed. If you already have offers, don’t volunteer that information to anyone who asks. Just say, “You can contact my agent with any questions.” By doing this, more buyers will come to view your property, and they will choose to make an offer before they know that they’re competing.
SET A REASONABLE HIGHEST & BEST PERIOD
When you have multiple offers, you want to give everyone the opportunity to increase their bid. Go back to any interested party and let them know that you’ve set a deadline for everyone to submit their highest & best offer. Set it far enough in the future that all interested buyers can bring an offer, but not so far in the future that buyers will get frustrated and walk away. If you’ve listed your property on Wednesday or Thursday, a highest & best period of Monday morning or afternoon usually works well. This allows everyone sufficient time to improve their offer, and it also gives you more time to show your property.
DON’T “WORK UP” BUYERS
If you have two or more buyers who’ve presented attractive offers as their “highest & best”, it might seem like a good strategy to go to each buyer and ask if they can increase their bid by a small amount, and then go back to another buyer and ask if they can beat that bid. While you might get a short term gain, this will often backfire in a big way. This strategy leads to buyers remorse more often than not, and you there is a very real risk that one or all of these good offers can disappear. By respecting the highest & best period that you’ve set, and negotiating in good faith, you have the greatest chance of getting the highest offer available to the closing table.
ASK FOR A BACKUP CONTRACT
Since you can only pick one winner, there will be at least one disappointed buyer. It’s best to ask the next highest offer if they would like to submit a backup contract. By executing a backup contract, it improves your leverage if the first buyer asks for large repairs or a high repairs credit. T his also gives you security in case the first buyer decides to walk away during their option period.

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Ruth helped us to view many houses and (over months) to make multiple offers in a really, really tough market for buyers. Our low bids were our own fault! Ruth's guesses are always spot on. We finally had a bid accepted last month, and Ruth helped us re-negotiate after significant problems were discovered. Ruth has gone above and beyond for us, giving us far more time during this long search than we could reasonably have expected. She even helped us look for a rental when we'd basically given up. Her advice has always been immensely valuable and brutally honest. She is the most knowledgeable agent I've met on the Central Austin market. She also handled our stress well, and believe me, buying in Austin right now is stressful!

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I worked with Jeremy Vandermause to buy my first home. Jeremy was so patient throughout the process (which I definitely dragged out as I gathered all the facts). He consistently sent me homes I was interested in and was eager to show them off, and on the odd occasions where I found one he hadn't already seen he always made himself available to walk through with me. He was very helpful in those walkthroughs pointing out home features I would have missed, or providing context on neighborhood. As a native Austinite, he definitely knows the history and cultural fabric of the city and each neighborhood. I started with close to zero knowledge of the home-buying process and Jeremy walked me through every step with clarity and patience. So excited about the home I now own! Plus, he's just a legit cool dude. I always really enjoyed our conversations and could tell from the start he was someone worth knowing in Austin

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This review is about Joe Gage, their real estate agent. I'm based in Sam Francisco and was looking for investment property in Austin. I tried out three different agents based on recommendations from different sources, including Yelp. Joe clearly stands out. He's very patient and responsive. I'm not familiar with the area at all thus had a lot of questions. His email reply contains detailed information of the neighborhood, including shops nearby, schools and so on. He regularly screen houses and give recommendations once he sees a good fit for investment house offered at reasonable price. He's very knowledgeable about the area. All his recommendations comes with details around why he thinks it's a good investment and sales/rental data in the neighborhood to justify the price he thinks it's worth as well as the expected rental income. I found him to be very methodical and organized. He's not a typical sales person. Maybe this is because he used to be an accountant. Needless to say he earned our trust and we went with him to make the purchase. I was very impressed through the whole process. He's very calm and never pushy. His recommendation on the bid price was right on and he was very good at following up with various parties to push things through. The process went through very smoothly. If anyone is looking for a good real estate agent in Austin, I'd recommend Joe whole-heartedly. His professionalism and calm personality make him a real pleasure to work with.

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