Sending out two contracts as home seller in NYC

[jbez]

Is it common or accepted practice to accept more than one offer and to send out multiple contracts to different buyers? My listing agent has been pushing me to do this. We have two accepted offers. I feel bad about doing this, but my listing agent says by parallel tracking we don't run the risk of having no offers if the first one falls through and the second one moved on to something else.

Any thoughts? I am highly conflicted by this because I am generally a very honest person and feel quite bad for the buyers by doing this.

[kate_g]

I've been in this situation before for my old home. You shouldn't feel guilty at all about this as this is done all the time. In fact, this happened to me on the buy side when I was trying to buy my old home. I had zero notice. I had already signed a purchase contract and sent in my good faith deposit. Then the seller never counter signed and the listing agent got back to me after several long days and said whoops, seller decided to sell to her neighbor for better price. No chance to improve.

So everything is fair in love, war and real estate. You should have no sympathy as it will be done to you just as easily. You think buyers will be loyal to you just because they're negotiating a contract with you? Too many buyers know that it's equally alright to negotiate multiple contracts at the same time on the buy side. It's like dating in NYC. Just got to live with it.

[lower_nyc]

Is it common or accepted practice to accept more than one offer and to send out multiple contracts to different buyers? My listing agent has been pushing me to do this. We have two accepted offers. I feel bad about doing this, but my listing agent says by parallel tracking we don't run the risk of having no offers if the first one falls through and the second one moved on to something else.

Any thoughts? I am highly conflicted by this because I am generally a very honest person and feel quite bad for the buyers by doing this.

I certainly emphasize with you on this one. Sending out multiple contracts makes sense for you as the seller since it mitigates your risk, but it does burn one of the buyers who has already started paying legal fees on the transaction. Perhaps the best way to do this is just to be very transparent with both buyers and make it clear that you will countersign whichever contract is sent back to you first.

Stepping into a buyer's shoes, I don't think I'd be too offended if the seller sent out multiple contracts if they made me aware of this. After all, NYC is a desirable market and often times sellers have a lot of leverage. However, I'd definitely be outraged if the seller didn't tell me that there were two contracts out. After all, how could I move as quickly as possible if the listing agent or seller never gave me the heads up that there was another contract out? Not sharing this info with the buyer also seems counterproductive to the goal of the seller, which is to motivate buyers to move as quickly as possible, right?