FSBO help- negotiations and accepting an offer

[MichelleD1977]

Hi MM forum,
My husband and I have put our house on the market FSBO. We have a nice house for the price point, and already have 5 showings scheduled this week.  The interest has been good, so I think we've done well with our price point and staging the house etc. We have moved on from educating ourselves on how to put your house on the market, and are now educating ourselves on how to deal with the offer and negotiation process.

Our most pressing question- how long can we wait before we accept an offer? If we just put the house up on Saturday, and today is Tuesday, I would like to think we could wait at least 1 week to allow everyone who has expressed interest to see the house, so that we can weigh one offer against another. I don't want to lose any good offers, but also want to make sure we get the best offer for our house.

How have folks dealt with this process? Thanks!

[kanga1622]

You will have to read each offer to determine what timeline you have. When we put in an offer on our home we made it clear in the contract that the offer was only valid for a set time frame (I believe it was 24 hours). I know several people that put offers in with a specific time frame to they knew realistically if their offer would be accepted or if they could put an offer in on another home.

[forummm]

If you get an offer you like, and don't have other offers in hand, you should take it. If you don't like it, make a counter offer.

If you get multiple offers at once, you can ask them all to send you their "best and final" offer and say that you will award the contract to the highest bidder (so they know they are competing).

[Freedom2016]

We just sold our condo in a very hot market, and we had a deadline for offers ("due at Tuesday noon, none to be reviewed prior to then"... we had 5 offers). You could try that approach if you think you are in a strong position. Otherwise, you will have to take each offer as it comes in...

[Cassie]

When we write an offer to buy we only make it good for 24 hours.