Contract

[Agent1]

After months of property being on the market, buyer's offer is accepted and negotiations lasted for over a month. As soon as contract was signed, seller's agent stated that they received an offer on the property at above asking price. We will never really know if there is truly another offer on the table. Just when I thought that there is some loyalty in the real estate game, there isn't. This tactic could have just been used just to get the buyer to increase their price. Could this have been handled any different or prevented?

[aslan]

Tough situation! It's true, you will never know for sure. Even if you're really good at reading people, it's still a guess as to whether the listing agent is making all of this up.

Keep in mind though that this does happen from time to time. Offers whether written or verbal are completely non-binding for either party until they have signed the contract. Because buyers traditionally sign first, sellers have an advantage and are able to act last. So even if your buyer has already signed a contract, it's not binding for the seller until they counter-sign the contract.

Now as a professional courtesy, most sellers and their attorneys will counter-sign and return the fully executed contract to the buyer's attorney within a business day or two. That's because the buyer is extremely vulnerable at this stage. He may not be able to proceed with another property because the seller could execute the contract at any time and deposit his check. If the seller takes too many days to counter-sign, the buyer's lawyer can reasonably demand the contract to be returned or nullified.

Not much to be honest in what you could have done differently. It's best to tell buyers upfront that they don't have a deal yet until contracts are fully signed. The best tactic is to just get your buyer to understand this, and if the situation feels competitive, to move extremely quickly. On some hot properties, the seller's agent may demand that the buyer sign the contract within 5 business days or else he'll send a contract out to the next buyer. The seller can do this anyway and might not even tell you. Does this help?