How to Handle a Bidding War: Part II

 

A few weeks ago we looked at how to handle a bidding war from the buyer perspective. You can read it here if you missed it.

 

It became a popular post so this week lets look at how to handle a bidding war from the perspective of the seller. Finding out you are having a bidding war on your home can be exciting. You put your home on the market, not sure whats going to happen, and you get multiple people climbing over each other trying to bid on your home.

 

While the dollar signs may be taking over your vision, its important to handle the bidding war properly so that there are no issues. You want to make sure everyone is treating fairly.

 

So if you have bidding war coming on your home there is a few different routes you can take.

 

You can have all the buyers come to your house and wait outside. Then one by one they will come in and present their offer. Everybody gets an opportunity to pitch why they have the best offer. Some will talk about money and closing costs. Others will talk more about the people coming in. 

 

You have to think about whats important to you. You may have offers that have the same amount of money so what comes next in terms of importance for you? 

 

The benefit of having everyone at your house is that if you want to get everything wrapped up quickly they’ll all be at your house. People are more likely to bid higher numbers when they see all their competition standing in front of them too.

 

You can also do it at your agents office. Its often similar to doing it at your own home. Its in a slightly more professional setting. Often only the agents themselves come for this and do not bring their buyers with them but not always. 

 

One of the major considerations for doing it at home vs office is parking. If you want everyone there does your home or the office have enough parking to accommodate everyone? If you want to get it all done in one night its better to have everybody in one place. 

 

The other option is to have everybody email their offers to your agent. Then your agent can come to you and present them all. This can be a much calmer and less stressful way of doing it. There is no pressure of being in front of everyone. You can take your time and think about it more. However, if you do want to counter any offers it may slow it down quite a bit if nobody is nearby.

 

 

When you get all the offers you have a few options. You can take what you consider to be the best offer and accept it. You can also select the top ones and send them back with the opportunity to improve. You also have the opportunity to send it back to everybody. If you want to work with one offer particularly but you think it could improve you could also choose to counter that single offer. 

 

You have a lot of options. To get through a bidding war the right way is to treat everyone fairly and always be up front about how you are going to do it. If you are going to accept the best offer on the first round then tell everyone that. If you are going to give people a chance to improve their offers then tell them that to. The best way to leave a bidding war without anyone feeling cheated is to have good communication. 

 

Even in a sellers market though there is no guarantee of a bidding war. It takes pricing the property correctly and the right marketing.