What’s the Key to Winning in a Multiple-Offer Situation?

Looking to beat out all the competition for a home this year? Arm yourself with these great tips!

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When trying to win in a multiple-offer situation on a home, there are a few things you can do to ensure that your offer comes out on top:

1. Pick an experienced agent. I can’t tell you how often I’ve worked as a listing agent and have seen the buyer’s agent enter a transaction with little experience. Many times, you’ll get up to 10 offers on one property, and going into it with someone who is experienced is extremely important. Your agent needs to be able to recommend the right courses of action so that you can come out successful.

2. Make a clean offer. A clean offer refers not just to price—if you’re able to get rid of your closing costs, have a solid down payment, limit your inspection contingency period to seven days, and eliminate home warranties and other special requests that would deduct from the purchase price and hurt your net offer. It will definitely make a difference.

3. Have your lender call the listing agent to verify your financing. There’s nothing worse than getting through the process only to have some issue crop up with the pre-approval. It’s important that your lender is setting the listing agent straight and telling them that you have solid financing and are good to proceed with the transaction. Your lender and agent should be working together for your benefit.

If you have solid financing and you have your lender call ahead of time, an escalation clause can be a deadly tactic in winning a multiple-offer situation.

4. Make your strongest offer first. I see buyers all the time going into an offer with money still left in their budget, hoping that the seller will accept their offer. Go into it with your walk-away number, meaning that if you don’t get the house, you’re okay—you’ve made your best effort, and you can walk-away knowing you did everything you could. Don’t wait for somebody to call for highest and best, and certainly don’t wait for a second chance.

5. Use an escalation clause. This is a bit creative, but I’ve used it tens of times this last year and it gets the job done. An escalation clause is a clause in your offer that says that you will bid up to a certain amount and you will upbid a competing offer by X amount. If you have solid financing and you have your lender call ahead of time, this, this can be a deadly tactic in winning a multiple-offer situation. You won’t be stuck overpaying for the home, and you may not even have to pay the asking price, provided that the next highest bidder didn’t exceed that amount.

I hope that you found these tips on winning multiple-offer situations helpful—these strategies have all worked for me in the past. If you have any questions or ideas for a topic that you’d like covered, please feel free to reach out to me.