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Well, believe it not, I just had my first multiple offer of the year on a small home in northern Travis County. Guess the Chicken Little’s in the media wouldn’t want to hear about this.

Anyway, I still find that most sellers, buyers, and even agents are not versed in how to handle multiple offers so that everyone involved is treated fairly and professionally. So, let’s consider how this multiple offer was handled.

First, it should be noted that I received all offers on the same day (actually night) and I printed, numbered and placed each in order in my file. Next, I emailed each offer to my out-of-town client for her review prior to our phone conversation. Then we went over each offer thoroughly and chose to make a counter-offer on the best offer we had received. The thing to remember here is that many sellers don’t understand that is very dangerous to even consider countering more than one offer at a time, lest the seller could become obligated to sell their house to more than one buyer. This is an attorney’s dream. Since all this was taking place at about 9:00pm at night, we knew we needed to act fast to get a one of the buyers committed before they all got frustrated and withdrew their offers. When we countered the best offer on the table, we did so that night, albeit late that night. I emailed the counter-offer (signed by seller) and gave the buyer till 6:00pm the following day to either accept or reject the counter-offer without the option of a counter. This gave a true sense of urgency to the buyers because all agents who submitted offers were aware that other offers were on the table and that only one buyer would be able to purchase the home. I advised the agent working with the buyers (note that buyer’s were in California) that at 6:01pm the following day we withdraw our counter-offer and move on to the next potential buyer. This time frame forced the buyers into decision making mode while still allowing us time to keep the other offers on the table.

Our counteroffer was accepted by about noon the following day and I contacted the agents who submitted the remaining offers that the seller had accepted another offer. It all worked out well but it could have ended terribly had we not given this some thought and acted professionally in the counter-offering.