I don't know if I would continue to business with clients like that. If you can't work off a smile and a handshake, it's not worth doing business.

We've been in the business for 25 years and NOTHING surprises us anymore. Don't mean to be negative, but expect the worst. The number of ethical, truly loyal customers has dwindled quite a bit.

In a hot real estate market simultaneous offers on multiple properties is a common event for my brokerage with the clients that we are representing. It helps us get the price that we feel is fair. Instead of the seller telling us that they have other buyers considering their property we simply tell them we are continuing looking at other properties. We give each seller the opportunity to come to terms that are acceptable to our buyer while reserving the option to cancel acceptance of any or all of the offers. Just my two cents worth....Working as an Exclusive Buyer Broker/Agent takes you down a road less traveled. Be brave...

BUYERS ARE ________?????

Gail,

If you don't think it was their intention to buy both properties, the dilema and responsibility might fall with the lender. If they are making multiple offers before one is accepted, then they appear to be commiting fraud, from my perspective, unless they qualify for both purchases.

In my market, I couldn't possibly consider writing a purchase offer without Desktop Underwriting approval. My lender is providing the seller information on his/her ability to buy the property based on the information given to her by the buyer. If the buyer didn't give the lender the "information" that there was another offer on another property, then the onus falls on the buyer. FRAUD at loan application. I'm sure it might not be as competitive in other areas and might not require a lender letter, but in my area, my lender would be toast if she intentionally wrote two letters of approval that were in essence, BS!

A Buyer can write as many offers with as many agents as he can afford to buy from. In other words if more than one offer is accepted he would have to carry out buying all of them that were accepted.
However if he made it clear that he had multiple offers out and would accept the first offer that came back to him on acceptable terms and that no offer would be deamed accepted until he signed off on the notice of acceptance line for multiple offers; he would be safe.

Here in CA we can have multiple offer section in our contracts; it's most common use for this scenario to be with the Seller who had multiple offers come in on a property and has countered them. However there is nothing stopping the Buyer from using this tool as long as they are up front about it. The Seller can decide not to play along when the offer is presented to him and go sell his home to someone else if he doesn't like these terms that the Buyer wants to play by.

I don't think buyers are obligated to follow the REALTORŪ COE.

Okay, so it's not nice to have offers out there that you likely will cancel but I don't think it's a huge thing either... Offers should be made in good faith but we all know that they can be canceled in the contingency period for just about any reason...

It happens drive on. I've done it once myself. Got a buyer in an exchange, they absolutely must by something, two properties look pretty good so you make an offer on both, cause if you do them one at a time you could end up giving $50k to Uncle Sam. If they both go through you have to disapoint one seller.

Not the way you like to do things but some days are just like that.