housebuying question

Mr. Nightingale and I have been in the market for our very first home, and finally we’ve found a house we like. In fact, we’ve found two, with similar prices, that we like equally well. We’re tempted to bid on both houses just to see which owners are willing to negotiate, since it appears that money will be the deciding factor. My GQ is this – is it usual to make an offer on two houses at the same time? Obviously we’ll only be buying one of them. Does making a verbal offer bind us to anything if the seller accepts, or do we have the option of changing our minds with no explanation? This is the first time we’ve ever bought a home, and it’s all very complicated. I’d appreciate any help from Dopers who’ve been here before. :slight_smile:

I think you’d better mention what country you’re buying the houses in. Laws vary significantly from country to country.

If you’re using a real estate agent, ask them about making two offers.

I don’t see why you can’t. A verbal offer is far from a binding agreement. If you make written offers to both of them, and they both accept, well, then you got two houses…

I don’t think any seller with half a brain is going to accept a verbal offer. Or they shouldn’t, anyway. Serious buyers usually make a written offer and put a deposit down. I myself wouldn’t “accept” a verbal offer from anyone; what’s to stop them from changing their mind while I have rejected other possibly higher, or better qualified, offers?

missbunny is right. A buyer won’t accept an oral (the word “verbal” means "in words’ and includes written and oral) offer for the exact reason that you want to offer it - you’re free to back out.

Having just sold a home in the US, I can tell you NOT to do this. When you make an offer on the house, it’s a contract - whether verbal or in writing. If the sellers come back and say “Yes!”, you’re going to have a very hard time backing out of the offer. At the very least, you stand to risk your earnest money. Earnest money, BTW, is money you put down to prove to the sellers that you’re serious about this offer. It’s usually around $2K-$5K, and it’s credited back to you when you close on the house.

If you do go ahead and try to make an offer on both houses, be warned that you’re really screwing the sellers over if you’re not serious. When a contract is written up on a house, that information is public record. Most agents won’t show a house with a contract on it. Essentially, if you’re not serious about the house, you’re taking it off the market for the time you think about it. The sellers will not appreciate this.

What you can do is have your agent talk to the seller’s agent, and see if there’s any room to move on the price. You won’t get any guarantees this way, but it’s worth a try. When it came down to us really trying to sell our house, we told our agent to tell people that we were negotiable on almost anything - we just wanted to sell the damn thing.

Most initial verbal offers are lowballs anyway. The prospective buyer wants an idea of how flexible the seller is.

Last year my wife and I put our house on the market. Over the course of six months, we showed the place to about 40 people, got three verbal offers. All were lowballs to which we made no counter.

If they’d made a reasonable offer, then we’d have asked for it in writing as well.

You obviously wouldn’t send in earnest money with a verbal bid you didn’t necessarily intend to honor. This is what makes verbal bids of this kind not binding in the eyes of the seller. As long as you don’t mind feeling a little sleazy if they both happen to accept your verbal offers and you have to back out of one (unlikely in this market, counteroffers are a common occurrence), there’s nothing that bad about what you want to do. Just remember, what goes around comes around!

I love homepricecheck.com you can find what houses sold for in your neighborhood in the US back to 87
or so.

Amazon.com actually has this book if you need it:
Home Buying for Dummies by Eric Tyson

Here’s my $0.02

lowball house #1, put down a deposit and tell the real estate co you plan to finance 100 or 110% of the house. send in a offer of $100 down payment. -If you say you are going to finance 80% or so they will expect 1%.

When you have a counter offer then make a reasonable offer for house 2 and again try the 100 - 110% financing $100 down. Increase each offer a little alternating back and forth. When you have an accepted offer (or you are close to something and it is in your price range) withdraw the bid on the other house.

Mke sure they are different agents - even still they talk.

I don’t think your plan would work, k2dave. For one, a $100 deposit to accompany the offer is laughably small. $1,000 is more like it. Second, if they are merely oral offers no smart seller will accept them, and if they have any savvy at all they won’t accept a monetary deposit on an oral offer since an oral offer means nothing anyway. Third, when a buyer makes a written offer there is a strict timeframe in which the seller must accept, counter, or decline the offer. What if you put the first offer & deposit in, have it countered, put the second offer & deposit in, get that countered, and continue to play this lowball/counter game, what’s going to happen if BOTH sellers decide to accept your lowball offers? Guess what, you are going to have a hell of a time getting out of one of the contracts you have just made to buy two houses. Even if you can get out of one, you will most certainly lose your deposit.

In NYS offers have to be in writing and if accepted you can be compelled to make good on an offer (though I don’t know how often this actually occurs).

What’s also interesting is that if you make an offer the seller’s full asking price (and no contingencies) they have to accept it! This is to prevent sellers from choosing who they’ll sell to based upon ancillary criteria (such as race, religion, etc.)

Maybe but I did that.

Also even if you have to put up $1000 (I’d really try for $500) by playing one against the other you could save thousands even if you had to eat a down payment.

Thanks for all the helpful responses, everyone. We’ve come to a meeting of the minds and have chosen a “favorite” between the two houses. Paperwork to be signed Thursday. And just to be clear, we certainly don’t want to screw over the either of the sellers! As I said, we’re very new at this and weren’t really sure how the bargaining process worked. And our realtor is kind of dingy and not much help in that department. But anyhow we’ll be making an offer this week to a seller who is supposedly very ready to move, so wish us luck!

Best of luck on a very big and very exciting move!

…and as an aside: did you know that Realtor(©®™etc.) isn’t a generic term but means “a real estate agent who is a member of the National Association of Realtors”? Real estate agent is, of course, the generic term.

This sounds fishy. Got a cite?

Keep in mind that a full offer with no-contingencies means: no inspection contingency, no financing contingency, etc. that is, a full cash “as is” offer.

I believe this is covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Federal Fair Housing Act), which was amended in both 1974 and 1988,

1866 basically said: no racial descrimination in housing, no exceptions
1968: no discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin, certain exceptions
1974: no sex discrimination, certain exceptions
1988: no discrimination based on handicap and families with children, certain exceptions

There are excemptions, such as in the sale/rental of a single-family dwelling when owned by an individual AND no broker/agent/salesperson is used AND no discriminatory advertising AND the seller owns three or fewer homes.

However! The Supreme Court ruled in 1968 in Jones v. Mayer “prohibiting all racial discrimination, private or public, in the sale and rental of property.” This supercedes any of the exemptions (of which I only listed one).

Supreme Court decisions in 1987 implied that the 1866 no-exceptions law extended to the other protected classes.

As to enforcement, I’d say it’d be pretty tough unless a property was conveniently withdrawn from sale to one party and immediately thereafter put back on the market only to have a lesser offer by another party. At the bare minimum. I’m not a lawyer or a real estate professional.

Jones v. Mayer is interesting reading (here’s a link: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/mayer.html

It basically says that you can’t prevent discrimination just by limiting States’ actions.

I love the line (paraphrased) “Congress cannot possibly have meant what they said.”

Not being able to discriminate is a far cry from saying the sellers “have to accept” a full price offer. What if the sellers change their minds and decide not to move? What if they are hoping for an offer higher than their asking price? These have nothing to do with discrimination.