What sellers need to know about a counter offer

There are home sellers lucky enough to be in the position of entertaining multiple offers on their New Orleans home at one time. When it happens, we are often asked if they can make a counter offer to everyone in the hopes of getting the best possible price.

The short answer? No.

Why not counter more than one offer at a time?

Unless you have cloned your home, you only have a single one to sell. If you start countering multiple offers and more than one gets accepted, you’ve just negotiated your way into a potential lawsuit when a buyer discovers that the house they thought they were purchasing has actually been sold to someone else.

How to Handle Multiple Offers

You have a couple of choices here.

Have your agent call for highest and best offers from all interested parties. This simply means that they will notify each agent that they need to write their highest and best offer on the property. The risk of doing so is that not all buyers will want to be involved in a potential bidding war and may drop out f the negotiations. The upside is that the truly motivated and interested buyers will bring their A game in the hopes of being the winner.

Select the best of the offers and counter it. A good agent will leave the door open with the other buyers in case you aren’t able to come to a mutual agreement with the person you are negotiating with.

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