Bidding war!

We got an offer on Tuesday and countered it.  It is another nice couple - I got to meet them on there third showing and the Realtor told me as they were leaving that they were writing a contract.

Well the next day, there was the contract!  And we countered their offer, and told the Realtor to tell the this was a our rock bottom price.  Since they had given us 18 hours for the review, I suggested that we put them on a short leash as well.

Well our Realtor told us to give them 48 hours. "We have six showings on your house over the next three days and we have another party working their mother to give in on the house - you're in the drivers seat if they take that long."

And boy was she right.

Four hours later another potential buyer - the one that they were trying to convince Mom to buy the house for them - stepped forward with an offer.  Then a half hour after that, a third buyer stepped forward.

What to do?

Again, Realtor - who said she hadn't seen this happen on a house in four years ("Two offers, maybe once or twice, but three?  Hell, no and that means Hell YES!") knew exactly what to do.  First she called the the second offer, and then the third offer and said that "there have been multiple offers, with a counter on the table," period.   "This will make them reassess their offers and force them to put forth a higher initial offer."

Then she waited an hour and called the first offer's agent and said "there have been multiple offers made," again, nothing more.  "We don't want them to know when these came in.  We want them to sweat a bit."

It worked, twenty minutes later offer one came through with a bid higher than our counter to them.  And we are in contract!

Better yet, we have a counter offer on the table as well.

The only downside to this is that this buyer is going FHA.  Can't have everything, but we're relieved and not as stressed.  Maybe some normalcy will return for the first half of August.  That would be nice.

And we've scheduled the move to Baltimore the week following Labor Day.

YAY!