Some people assume that when you have multiple offers on a home, it makes the process easy peasy. Maybe the agent doesn’t need to do as much work. Maybe the agent doesn’t add as much value. That somehow all the work is done, when it hasn’t really started. When someone thinks this, I ask “You have 10 or 20 offers, now what?” That is usually met with a blank stare or shrugged shoulders.
Do you accept the highest offer and call it a day?
Do you send a counter offer to all buyers?
How do you decide which buyers to send a counter offer to?
Does everyone get the same counter offer?
How do you drive the price up and end up with the highest price, best terms and most motivated and qualified buyer?
How do you answer questions from the buyer’s agent that keeps their buyer in the game and gets their client to offer their best price?
Does the listing agent have the guts to counter offer the best offer to drive it up even higher?
You can probably see it’s a little more complicated than you may have thought. This is where an agent’s skill, experience, process and commitment to their client make a big impact and difference.
While navigating a home sale with multiple offers, it is always interesting to experience how agents handle the offer process for their buyers. In this case, as is common, some simply sent in offers without contacting me. Lazy, always a head-scratcher and never in their client’s best interest. Some use a cover letter. Some call to get a lay of the landscape. Finally, some call to find out what’s most important to the seller and ask how they can write the best offer possible. Again, you can probably sense what the best practice is. Turns out a best practice is like common sense. Common sense isn’t so common, and best practices aren’t always followed.
It’s always best to speak with the listing agent before writing and submitting an offer. Always. Sometimes you get shut out and don’t get any information from the seller’s agent. Other times you can find out how many offers there are, get some insights on the seller’s situation, and find out the seller isn’t always looking for the last dollar and some other term is important to them. You never find out if you don’t ask, typically to the detriment of the client.