Recently I’ve been working as a Boston buyer’s agent on a property in the Boston Beacon Hill area. This property appears to be receiving many offers, which is good for the seller - however if you are one of several people bidding and trying to buy the Beacon Hill building that may not be such a good thing.

As a Boston real estate agent if we are working as the listing agent and multiple offers come in we hope that our sellers will take our advice as to how to handle each offer. An experienced listing agent has done this before and knows how to handle it.

And if we are working with a buyer making an offer it can be a little trickier but hopefully our buyers will also take our advice. Unfortunately if there are multiple offers only one buyer can "win" and end up buying the Beacon Hill property

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As a buyers agent with a buyer who wants to put an offer I think it is important to speak to the listing agent. Knowing what is going on with the Beacon Hill property can help you advise your buyer correctly. If, for instance, the Boston listing agent says we have had many showings and there are two offers on the table you know that your buyer must place their offer right away and can not put in a low ball offer. Buyer’s need to also understand that the seller will review each offer and will look at the price offered and the other terms such as the type of financing, how much down payment, is it a cash offer, when will the closing be and any other contingencies. A full price offer or an offer over the asking price, all cash, closing when the seller is ready and wants to close is a buying offer.

Now let’s say that there are three offers on the table. Every buyer wants to know what the other offers are so they can make their decision based on that. Problem is that the listing agents will not tell you what the other offers are. There are a few reasons for that. First let’s say the three offers are $2,050,000, $2,052,000 and $2,055,000. What would you do given that information? Offer $2,056,000? Now let’s say that each buyer is given the same information and each buyer offers $2,056,000 and then you do another round – it doesn’t work. So a seller on the advice of their listing agent may ask each buyer to come to their "highest and best" offer.

Each buyer is being asked to decide the highest price they are will to pay and if they can improve their terms this is the time to do it. This time around when the seller reviews the offers he will believe that each buyer is putting their best foot forward and he should make a decision and that is what happens often. Sometimes however buyers will come to their highest number and none of the offers are acceptable and the seller doesn’t accept any of the offers on the table.

The next thing buyers will want to know if how much the buying offer was. Well, the seller and listing agent won’t tell you that either because the deal could break and the property could come back on the market. The seller then is put into a compromised position having everyone know what he accepted because new buyers coming to see the property might bid higher than the accepted price and therefore the seller’s position is compromised.