On Dec 10, 7:11 am, verivin <veri...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> the buyer is having trouble finding financing (he's a
> developer and the housing market here in Michigan is very bad) and
> has had us extend the agreement a couple times.
I don't know MI law. The following are just general comments for discussion.
You realize of course that you were not obligated to extend the agreement in the first instance, since "time is of the essence" in a contract for sale of realty and failute to fulfill the contract in the time allotted amounts to a breach by the buyer, permitting you to keep the good faith deposit and move on to the next prospective buyer. But once you have agreed to an extension, that new agreement, like the original one, is a binding contract. So, you have to give this buyer the new amount of time you have already agreed to extend, but don't you think enough is enough? It's time to tell him he has to fish or cut bait, and that there will be no further extensions.
> Now a couple other
> potential buyers have emerged who are offering more than the first
> purchaser and claim to have private financing to complete the deal
> quickly.
You are lucky, then, in this declining market for sellers.
> We understand that we cannot sell the property to anyone
> else while the current deal is running, but we would like to lock in
> the other offers as soon as possible.
You can't enter a firm contract with any of them, but they _can_ offer a contingent contract, which will become effective and binding only if the first deal falls thru. It's done all the time.
You can just keep the offers in hand, and accept one of them _after_ the first buyer fails to settle up by the current deadline. Try to have them be "firm offers" which the prospective purchasers promise to keep open for a certain amount of time, so they each cannot be withdrawn until after their own internal deadline and you have the time you need to decide whether to accept it or not..
Do you have a broker or attorney helping you with this? It would surely be a good idea, since you're getting into areas you apparently know nothing about. A knowledgeable seller may be able to handle his own sale with no problems, but a newbie at the real estate biz would be a fool to do so IMO.
> My question is: is it ok to
> receive additional offers to purchase (in writing) about a month
> before the current deal is due to expire?
You can receive them any time you want.
> (If the new offers don't
> turn out to be concrete, we would likely extend the current offer
> again.)
Huh? That sentence puzzles me. The new offers are "concrete" if they are in writing (a legal requirement) and (customarily) if they are accompanied by a good faith deposit which will be forfeit if that buyer doesn't come thru. If you say you have several new offers already, they are either good offers or not offers at all, depending on whether they meet those requirements, and you should be able to tell now. The only way you can accept one of them is to let the currently binding contract expire by it own terms, so I frankly don't see how you could "extend" the existing contract again "if the new offers don't turn out." OTOH you could, informally, tell the current buyer that if he's still interested, he too is welcome to submit a new contingent contract offer after you have accepted one of the other offers after his first offer expires. There is no prohibition against giving him a second chance, but that would be a completely new contract, not an extension of the old one. Good luck,
--
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Mike Jacobs
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