With real estate offers, who says that life is fair?

(flickr photo by maorix)

Sadly, homebuyers are finding that sellers are in the driver’s seat once again.

And they don’t always play fair.

As lawyer Adam Stone points out in a BrickUnderground.com column, not only do many sellers entertain multiple offers.  They also may work with multiple contracts.  Stone asks a pertinent question:

There is more than one way to win ‘bidding war’

Escalators here would serve an important purpose. (Flickr photo by zoetnet)

There is more than one way to win what homebuyers insist on calling a bidding war.  (I call it “competition.”)  But at least two of them are shunned here in New York.

Of course, conventional tactics include raising the price and stripping the contract of any contingencies such as financing and home inspection or otherwise improving terms such as settlement date.

One of the out-of-the-box idea that no one here endorses, however, demonstrates a buyer’s high motivation to close the transaction.  The concept is to offer

Sellers always have the last word on offers

Submission of a back-up offer is where the rubber meets the road. (Flickr photo by theilr)

Back-up offers exist in the gray area of real estate transactions.

Nobody likes them more than listing brokers and their clients.

Our housing market is undergoing major change

Inventory has nowhere to go but up, but don’t expect a surge. Click to expand. (Source: Miller Samuel Inc.)

The word all of us have been using to describe the housing market in Manhattan is “stable.”

Well, as any prospective buyer of a well-priced apartment will tell you, much of the market has changed in a big way.  Open houses of new listings are jammed, and that is just part of the evidence.

The chief reason is inventory that is sharply down from previous years.

Respected appraiser/data hound Jonathan Miller has pulled together some astounding numbers.