What Happens When You Have More Than One Offer on Your Home

Home sellers’ greatest fear is that they won’t get any offers when they put their house on the market, which is almost always not the case.What can be a joyful experience, but also distressing, is when sellers receive multiple offers to buy. How do they decide? There is a perception that the first offer should be taken, but this is not always the case. Sellers should pick the offer that is in their best interest. Oddly, the highest bid is not always the one they should accept. Some factors to be considered:

• What type of financing the buyer will have and whether or not they
are actually approved for the loan.
• When they want to complete the deal and when they want to move in. If they can’t complete the deal until a month or more later, you might not want to wait. If they insist on moving into your place next week, you might not be able to arrange it.

Consider one offer at a time, making the first one the offer that will expire first. Usually the offer is good only for a day or a few hours. Sometimes a seller will overlook a good offer, hoping for a better one. If the seller waits too long, however, the offer will expire and the next one may not be as good. Act wisely, but act quickly.