If you live in a very strong seller's market, you may continue to get showings, but in a balanced market an accepted contract kills interest in a property. Realtors are reluctant to waste their time showing it and buyers aren't interested in seeing a property that is already spoken for.

Your best bet is to tell these buyers to come back when they have an accepted offer on their house.

There is no benefit to you to accept this offer. It only benefits the buyer. I agree with Jewel, if the property is available when your buyer gets an offer on their home, they can come back.

This is a FSBO --- how would anyone know we signed a contract? We are getting very good exposure through Zillow and Craig's List.

I guess it would be to our advantage to sign it if the buyers are in a position to remove the contingency if we get another offer. Right?

Even though you are FSBO, you have an ethical obligation to inform any future lookers that you are under contract with a 72 hour kick out clause. You can't wait until you have a new offer in hand - since your existing contract is a material fact that would impact another buyers offer.

But think long and hard about this. Would you make an offer on a house that another couple was under contract for? Would you feel bad for the couple who is wanting to buy your house but can't afford to swing a bridge mortgage? Yes, this is a business transaction. But how would you feel if you were the buyer in this transaction and the seller found another buyer to yank the house out from under you.

*I guess it would be to our advantage to sign it if the buyers are in a position to remove the contingency if we get another offer. Right?*

If buyer #1 hasn't received a contract on their home at the time the kick-out clause on your home is activated and removes the contingency anyway, I'd be concerned that the finance contingency will be cited closer to closing as a reason for the buyers to back out. Wouldn't do it. Wouldn't do it. Wouldn't do it!

to put it very plainly ...

a contingent offer is not an offer to BUY ...

its an offer to have you WAIT .... in the hope that they sell their house.. someday.. some way ...

i would have to think ... that if they cant sell their house before they make the offer to you ... then they arent going to have a sale in 3 days.. 72 hours ... eh???

think about it ...

IMHO ... reject the offer to WAIT .. and have them visit you back when their house is under contract ... and pray to God the offer on their house is NOT contingent ...

ken

The problem the buyers have is that if they can't have our house/acreage, they don't want to sell their house. If they have a contract with us with/kick-out clause they can try to sell their house and know that they will have 3 days to make the contract solid. In that case, they would have to decide if they want to take the chance to have two mortgages until their house sells.

But --- they are buying time and hope their house sells before we get another offer. It probably will because we live in the middle of nowhere (in a bad school district) so our chances of selling first are minimal.

My problem with the above scenario is that I view it as a luxury to be able to go from selling your house to get into the one you love. Luxuries cost money. What happens if they find something they like better than your place while their house is on the market? If they want the luxury of you holding out for them, I would have them put down a considerable deposit that forfeits should the contract be terminated or their house not sell. Considerable deposit means something that hurts to lose, like $10K or a percentage of the house or whatever.

Your potential buyers can market THEIR house with a contingency that requires their offer on YOUR house to be accepted. You continue marketing your house, they begin marketing theirs. That's how we sold our last house - we did not put it on the market until we found the house we wanted to buy and did not put an offer in on that house until we had a contract on ours. But we were working with a realtor who knew going in that we would not risk owning 2 homes and would also not risk being under the gun to buy something we didn't love because of a looming closing. A good realtor can get creative when needed.

What that means is if you accept an offer from someone else, they are no longer obligated to sell theirs, so they don't have to continue trying to sell when the one house they want is not available anymore. It's dependent on what your market is like and honestly, if they were going to try and do FSBO I wouldn't give it a second thought. But if they list with a savvy realtor who 'gets it', this *can* work for both parties. Not that it makes any difference to your situation, but a smart realtor would know that even if they list their house with that contingency, they are already mentally leaving their house - so if your house sells out from under them, there's a good chance they'll continue with the contract.

You could consider selling them an option to buy your house, refundable on completion of the transaction in a set time. That way you get paid for your lost opportunities, time, and inconvenience if they don't sell and don't exercise the option.

Given what you said, it's FSBO, in the middle of no where, and with bad schools, I would jump all over this offer. It maybe a long time before you get another buyer, and it sounds as if their house will sell before you do so.

I agree with rrah, doesn't appear you have much to lose.

This is common around here - most people moving up need the equity out of their current home. We were one of three bidders in the house we just bought and all three were contingent on selling their current home. Despite this we still closed in under 60 days from the time they accepted our offer. It was nerve wracking experience as a buyer but how it had to be done. I absolutely would not have moved forward with the purchase had they insisted on a 72 hour kick out clause -- I was only selling my current house (loved it) in order to get this particular home and would have been devastated if I lost both. That said as a seller I would want to talk to their realtor about their home and the condition and likelihood of a quick sale-- don't think id move forward if theirs is not likely to sell quickly,

Like Kris-ma above, this is how most houses in my area sell too. People are moving up and need the equity from one house to buy another ... but can't sell until they have something they can buy.

This question is just one of the many reasons to hire professional help to sell your home. The 3-5% you are "saving" is just so not worth the risk you are unknowingly taking on by not knowing the ways to deal with this transaction legally.

If you are accused of a crime would you hire an attorney or would you think you could handle the legal system/court proceedings on your own?

I don't see the problem here. The last house I bought had a contingency offer on it. We made a cash offer with no contingencies, the previous buyers had 48 hours to remove the contingency (which was the sale of their house), they couldn't so we bought the house. No problem at all.

When the pro's and cons are kind of grey, the gut is usually right.

What is your gut telling you?

What brought you here before making a decision?