The Walling listing had been such a source of frustration to Ellen. It was as if the market just came to a screeching halt the day after she listed it. And it was a good listing, too. It was well-priced at $325,000 -- at least it seemed so the day she listed it. The property presented itself well; the location, right at the edge of the forest, was dynamite; and even her sellers were wonderful. But, here it was, five months later, and still no offers.

Oh, there had been plenty of activity (which was a good part of the reason there had been no price reduction): the home was shown regularly, and she had even engaged in those “pre-negotiation” rituals (“Aren’t you priced a little high?” “Are your sellers not motivated?” “Where did you get that number, anyway?” etc.) with a couple of other agents -- both of whom were friends, by the way -- but, still, no offers had been written.

So it was no wonder that both Ellen and Ted Walling (Alice Walling was out of town) were excited when Lisa called to say she had an offer to present. Lisa was a friend, too, and a darn good agent, even if she did work for another firm.

“I’m sorry this is not as high an offer as you were looking for,” Lisa said after they had gone through the details of price and terms, “but I really think this is the best the Collins can do. They love your home, and they would move into it tomorrow if they could. But, they just can’t get here sooner than his three month transfer date. Please, please give their offer every consideration.”

“You know, Ellen,” Ted Walling began as soon as Lisa left, “Alice and I had certainly hoped to do better than this $275,000 … .”

“I know, Ted, and I still think we can achieve the kind of price we have set.”

“Now, now, just a minute. Let me finish. Alice and I have talked about this, and of course we’ll have to verify with her when she gets back tomorrow night, but I think we are at the point where we might accept this. Frankly, when we decided to sell, we were ready to sell. This dragging on for months and months has been emotionally hard on us. Actually, though I don’t like the idea of going as low as two seventy-five, it’s the ninety days that is almost worse. We just want to be done with this.”

Isn’t that the way it always is, Ellen thought to herself. You never really knew what was going on in your sellers’ minds, until they had an offer in front of them. But she didn’t want them to sell themselves short.

“All right, Ted, I understand; but let me suggest something. The Collins’s have given you forty-eight hours to respond, knowing that Alice won’t be back until tomorrow. Maybe we can get you a better offer before that time is up.

“You know that I have had conversations with both Bill Benning and Larry Knowles about their clients who were interested in your property. Well, I know for a fact that their buyers haven’t purchased anything yet, so maybe we should put something in front of them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, Ted, with your permission of course, I could go to their agents and let them know what you are considering accepting. I would suggest to them that they might try bettering the offer you have before you -- no guarantees, of course. Doing that could quite likely elicit an offer from one or both of them. It’s not going to get you the $325,000 we had been hoping for; but you might do better than what you are looking at now.”

“Is that legal?”

“Absolutely, Ted, you know I wouldn’t suggest it if it were not.”

“OK, then, Ellen. You go ahead and see what you can do. We know you’re looking out for us.”

And it worked. Bill’s buyer came in with an offer of $280,000 and a thirty-day escrow period. Larry’s, unable to offer a shorter escrow, sought to make up for that by offering $285,000 -- a full $10,000 over the offer he had been told about.

What a change! Five months of doldrums, and now this. Ellen, Ted, and Alice sat around the table grinning at each other, all of them long over the $325,000 price by now. It was a good thing Ellen was still maintaining some of her professional composure, because Ted and Alice were almost giddy.

“Feast or famine, I guess. We have to hand it to you, Ellen, you sure knew what to do,” Ted enthused, “but what do we do now? How do we handle this situation?”

“You have a number of options, Ted and Alice. Let me lay them out for you.” Ellen went on to explain that they could choose to accept one of the offers as it stood, or they could counter to one while rejecting the others, or they could actually choose the procedure of countering to more than one.

It was more of a surprise to Ellen than it was to Ted that Alice spoke up, totally on top of the situation. “Well, I think we ought to make counter offers to all of them, if Ellen says there is a way to do that. We all know that everybody can always do a little bit better than what they offer the first time around. And, while we’re not going to get what we thought we would, I think we should try to do a little better than these first offers.”

After some discussion, they wrote three counter offers. They asked Bill’s buyer to come up from $280,000 to $285,000. To the other two, because they wanted longer escrow periods, they asked for more -- $290,000 - but they asked both of them to shorten the time to sixty days.

Ellen prepared the counter offers on the state form that included a seller-protection procedure, which prevented them from being over-obligated if more than one party accepted. She then delivered the counter offers to each agent respectively. Of course, each one wanted to know what was going on; and she told each one of the other offers and how they were handling the situation.

Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you hoped they would.

Lisa’s client was furious. He had never heard of such a thing. It seemed both illegal and immoral. (She did not think it would be wise to try to correct him.) And, even though he might have worked with this in a straightforward situation, he didn’t want to have anything more to do with these people or this property.

The other two had somewhat similar reactions. They both told their agents they didn’t want to get into a bidding war.

The Walling listing expired at the end of the 120 day listing period. There had been no further offers, even though they had lowered the price to $305,000.