Wondering how to handle multiple offers on a house? If you’re a home seller in the middle of a bidding war, it might seem overwhelming to sort through all the offers on your home to find the best possible deal.

While you might be tempted to choose the home buyer offering the highest amount, this isn’t always the best option. There are several factors to consider when evaluating offers on your home aside from price.

In this post, our award-winning team at Your Home Sold Guaranteed Realty — The Nathan Clark Team will discuss how to handle multiple offers on a house, including what you should know about evaluating and negotiating offers. That way, you’ll have the best chance of selling your home fast and for top dollar.

How to Handle Multiple Offers On a House To Get Top Dollar

Evaluating Offers

Many home sellers’ first instinct is to accept the buyer making the highest offer. This move might make sense if your goal is simply to sell your home for the most money possible. However, there are several considerations you should think about before choosing the highest bidder.

First, a higher offer may not be worth it if it comes with multiple contingencies. Common contingencies include the offer being dependent on the home’s appraisal value and the property passing the home inspection. 

But the buyer may add other contingencies to their offer, such as needing to sell their own home first or requesting you leave behind a particular item or appliance with the home.

Before dealing with contingencies, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of how quickly you want to sell your home. If the buyer says they’re waiting to sell their home first, it will mean you’re stuck on their timeline. And if their sale falls through, so will their offer on your home. 

So if you want to avoid extra hassle, an offer with fewer contingencies may turn out to be better in the long run, even if it means a slightly lower asking price. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should settle for low offers. An experienced realtor can help you get top dollar and negotiate contingencies that could potentially delay the sale.

Negotiating With Buyers

After you’ve evaluated your offers and defined your own goals for the home sale, the next step is to begin negotiations.

You don’t technically have to negotiate, for example, if you get a really good offer and want to accept it immediately.

However, if you’re dealing with multiple good offers, negotiating can help clear out some of them so that you’re left with only the most serious buyers. And when negotiations are finished, you may find that you end up with an even better deal on your home.

One way to negotiate is to have your listing agent let all the buyers know that there are multiple offers on the table, and you’d like everyone to put forward their best and final offer.

This option is only a good idea if you’re prepared for a true bidding war. And even if that’s the route you want to go, it’s important to keep in mind that the buyers may not be up for that. If buyers don’t want to hassle a bidding war, you risk them moving on to another home and withdrawing their offers.

Another method for handling multiple offers is to negotiate with your best offer and keep two or three others as fallback options. 

When negotiating, there are no rules against disclosing the details of one buyer’s offer to a second buyer in hopes of getting the second one to offer a better deal. You can use this strategy with one buyer or all the buyers to see if any of them counter with something better.

Remember that even if you tell one buyer you accept their offer, you’re not obligated to go with it until the paperwork is officially signed. But to avoid any disputes, it’s better to take your time and wait if you think you can get a better deal. 

No matter what, you should work with your realtor to get the best possible offer on your home. 

Sell a Home in New England For Top Dollar With Us

How to handle multiple offers on a house starts with an experienced real estate professional. A realtor who has years of experience in your housing market will have the best knowledge of home prices in the area and how your home compares to others on the market.

And once you start getting offers, your realtor can use their professional negotiating skills to help you get top dollar.

At Your Home Sold Guaranteed Realty — The Nathan Clark Team, we’ve been helping home sellers in New England for over 21 years. During that time, we’ve developed a reputation as one of the best realtors in the area– and we have the data to back it up.

On average, we sell homes 30% faster and for nearly 7.5% more money than other agents in New England. In addition, we offer several seller guarantees that protect your interests during a home sale, like our Seller Cancellation Guarantee and Guaranteed Sale Program.

To learn more about selling a home with our realtors, give us a call at 401-288-3557 or fill out the form below for more information.