10.35 Presentation of Competing Offers

Company policy is to always submit offers in the order they are received by the actual date and time. When practicing real estate, a licensee is often faced with how to handle multiple offers for the same property. A common example would be a listing licensee acting as a dual agent and writing an offer for a buyer on the property he has listed. The licensee makes an appointment with the seller to present the offer, then gets a message that another licensee has written an offer and would like to present it to the seller. The licensee knows that if the second offer is accepted he will only receive the listing side of the commission and decides to ignore the message and proceed. If the seller accepts his buyer’s offer, he plans to phone the competing licensee and suggest that offer be presented as a backup offer because there is already an accepted offer on the property. This is an ethical violation as well as a violation of the fiduciary duty of loyalty whereby the listing licensee put his interest ahead of that of his seller.

If any method to present offers in a specific order is to be used, the actual date and time of the offer preparation should be used. Presenting competing offers in an order designed to induce the seller to accept one offer over the other is unethical. It also may be grounds for revocation of one’s license and termination from the Company.