Sorry I missed this comment with it dropping off the sidebar. Sometimes, but not often, the buyers are not told if there are two offers, if one is really bad. It is a judgment call. If you have a great offer and a bad offer, often the seller is best off just taking the great offer and not scaring them away.

As the seller’s agent, we are never “for the buyer or buyer’s agent”, but the seller is not best served by revealing the bids, unless it is an auction sale. If you tell the buyer the other buyer’s offer is $415,000, they will just bid $416,000, and that is not fair to the other buyer. Better to tell them both that there are two offers if they are both acceptable. This is more fair to the buyers than revealing their offers, and gives the seller the opportunity of getting a price that is not just “a hair over”. All around for all parties, a more fair and better policy.

But there are no rules. Price is not always the primary consideration. If one is zero down and one is 30% down, it is often better to simply counter the strongest buyer. Highest price but doesn’t close serves no one.

Both The Tim and Reba seem to be suggesting that if you advise the buyer agent that a better offer exists, they may advise to create a better offer, leading to more options for your client. Open communication leading to a smoother, more lucrative transaction. Ardell seems to suggest that she can’t be bothered with that. Learn the business, learn to dance, learn to read into what I’m saying, learn to read minds.

In one breath Ardell says “Seller’s best interest when the listing agent. Buyer’s best interest when the buyer’s agent. Unlike you, we do not play both sides of the fince simultaneously. You are dual. we are not.”, and in another she says “And I simply cannot tell them how they can beat out the other offer, that is not fair to the other agent and the other agents buyer.”

Which is it? Are you for the seller, buyer agent number one, or buyer agent number two? If we trust your first statement that the seller is your interest, why not offer information to the first offer to try and get a more competitive offer for your client? Buyer number two can also counter if they are interested in the property. Either way, your client wins.

I find it really baffling how some agents turn the process into a game instead of serving as a go-between for sellers and buyers, smoothing out the process with the expertise and experience they have gained over time. How many properties does the average person purchase or sell over their lifetime? An agent should be acting in the best interest of whomever they represent. The scenario Ardell paints in her article doesn’t allow that for any party, except maybe the agent with the second, better offer.

The way I see it, a little more clarity only serves to make the process easier for all involved. Sellers, buyers, and agents.

And as an insight into the type of person who wrote this article, I think post number 35 says it all. Ardell doesn’t seem to get the whole idea of a blog. While you are calling this a group blog, it really is more of a bulletin board where the contributors and readers all have free flow ideas on each post. I love how she talks about how she would have shown a little respect to Reba while peppering the post with criticism and personal attacks. I thought Reba’s posts were respectful and offered another idea on the subject, just as if she were an outside reader. What help would it be for her to go write her own article on the subject? This is where the discussion is taking place. If you as a writer want the “newspaper” scenario described, go write for a newspaper.

The whole idea behind this technology is to advance the communication between people, not preach from a soap box with minimal back and forth between parties. But then, that brings us back to my confusion about this subject to begin with.

We’ve always had over-appraise-for-refi issues in every market. I want to hear if anyone is selling at a loss. Bad appraisals happen every day. Not a market indicator.

Not sure where you are. I’ve been trying to track the sale of 714 Manhattan Beach Blvd. in Manhattan Beach. If and where that sells will tell me where your market is. It was listed close to where it last sold 6 months prior. I’ll have to go see if it is still on R.com. While the sale would have been a loss after costs for the owner…if it sold at least at where it was purchased, then that market will be flat…but that market tends to be flatter (as all are) after summer until Spring.

Refi-horror stories are not signs the market is down. They are signs that people over spent their equity…not relevant to market conditions. Californians may have to learn how to not live off their equity…not a bad thing.

Give me another one LOL! I’m throwing that one back.

Case in point: Client bought his property in 2002. In 2005 it appraised at $650,000 and client refinanced accordingly. Life change comes along in 2006, and the property is now on the market in the upper 500s. The offer in hand is in the LOW 500s, and not enough to pay off the refi.

And of course, the money pulled out in 2005 is long gone and funds are not available to cover the short fall. Since it was a cash out refi, lender is not terribily interested in allowing a short payoff.

And so it goes.

I was over at your place the other day. Wondering how things are going outside the blog…company wise. You can email me offblog if you like.

As to your comment, my bigger concern is the interaction of agents in a group blog. Clearly had Reba written an article about rejecting offers by striking out the first page (kinda like slapping the buyer in the face to me), I would NOT have posted a comment on HER entry disputing her, unless it was a misrepresentation of some kind. She certainly can strike out people’s contracts, and say so on one of her own posts. But to jump into mine, puts me in a difficult spot. I have to make the “correction” to readers of my article. Tight spot for me.

Group Blog Etiquette is in infancy stage. Multiple agents posting on the same blog can cause problems and hard feelings. I try to stay away from the articles of other agents on this blog out of “courtesy” to one another.

I think the etiquette is you can write a new article with an opposing view. You can return comment of other bloggers if they come into “your face”.   But to run over to someone else’s article, as fellow writers on the same blog to disagree, and be the first one to run in?  Set’s a whole different chain of events into motion, and possibly some hard feelings in the give and take of that.  The lawyers and I do it   So I’m a little used to it.  But two agents having at it from the same blog?

I “have at it with” Jonathan or you over issues I think will advance the industry as a whole, but no “procedural or client advice” differences.  Maybe I’m not seeing this right.  Maybe there is no difference if it’s an agent from “outside” vs. “inside” or type of discussion.  Just feels odd.  Not sure…new technologies equals some discussion needed.

If we were in the same office, for example, and I hear another agent telling their client something different than I would say, would I walk in to correct the agent in front of their client? Maybe Seems same logic would apply.

It would be like one writer of the newspaper, sending a published letter to another writer of the same newspaper, arguing with the first writer. Seems odd. I’m sure journalists don’t do that within their same shop. They might a few days later give their views on the topic in a different fashion…but not jump into the other persons’s article like that.

Group Blogs – I’ve been asked to be interviewed on the topic and have declined, as it is still an etiquette to be established from experience.  In that sense.  We are clearly the pioneers.

I wouldn’t reject the first offer, either. Even when offers are very low, I suggest we counter. Sometimes you get fruit from that tree.

And you aren’t getting paid to educate buyer’s agents. You are getting paid to represent the best interests of your clients – which, from what I can tell, you have done.

I might need to write a similar article about this…

Yes, for sure, it’s not all about price. That is why I urge agents not to reveal “weaknesses” in attitude. That reminds me of something I promised to write “with” Noah-Urban Digs.

I hear ya. I think both Jim and I are talking about real life current situations where that is not likely as we, at least I, am not talking about a “bid out” war…just a weak offer and a strong offer.

How bad is it there? I’ll have to get myself a Beach Reporter and check it out

No, we were in a price range where $50k was about 25% of the sales price. The house was simply well-priced, was on the market for two days, and there is very little quality inventory in that price range.

Bu no, sometimes the “best” offer is not the one with for the most money.