The following story is one of those tales that makes you say, “Oh yeah…a story like that’s gotta be true!”

Well, I have it on good authority that this actually happened…

….a real estate transaction was decided by the flip of a coin!

Are you one of those people that goes around saying, “We should have lunch!”?

I’ve never been one of those people.  I just assumed that it was something you say; more of a metaphoric suggestion, implying that if you really were interested in seeing/speaking-to this person, you would have lunch…..but you won’t.

Well, I stand corrected.

I ran into the proverbial “old friend” the other day, and she did the whole, “Heeeeeeey!  How are you?  Bla-bla-bla.  We should have lunch and catch up!”  I told her it sounded like a great idea and that I’d definitely like to have lunch with her, and then I left….and expected never to hear from her again.

But to my surprise she contacted me, and we subsequently met up to each club-sandwiches last week in The Beaches.

She is currently working at a real estate office as an assistant, clerk, or some sort of non-receptionist position.  I’m not really sure, as I really wasn’t paying attention, to be perfectly honest…

But the entire hour wasn’t completely uninteresting; she told me an unbelievable story about a multiple-offer transaction that happened in her office last week.

Let me provide a little background first about the multiple offer process.

Let’s say there are six offers on a property.  The listing agent can accept one of the offers, and reject the other five, or he/she can “work with” two or more of the offers.

Let’s say a house is listed at $389,900, and two of the six offers are $425,000 and $426,000, while the other four offers are all clustered down around the $400,000 mark.  The listing agent might elect to work with the two higher offers, which essentially points to one thing: the dreaded send-back.

“There are two offers that we’re working with.  And they’re really close, so we’re going to send you both back.”

What does this mean?  To quote Damon Wayans: “Mo Money, Mo Money, Mo Money.”  They’re sending you both back to “improve your offers” and add more money to the purchase price.  Since the offers are so close, they assume that if you were holding the #2 offer, you’d really want a second-chance at the prize.

This brings me back to the story that was told to me over lunch last week.

A house in The Beaches was listed at $299,000, and there were five offers as follows: $325,388, $325,000, $315,500, $305,000 and my personal favorite: $287,500.  I guess that person didn’t get the memo…

The listing agent decided to work with the two highest offers, since they were a few hundred dollars apart.  For the record, NEVER offer an even number in a multiple offer scenario.  If you have $325,000 in mind, make it $325,475 just in case there is an offer at $325,000 and they take the highest one.

They sent the two highest offers back, and the result was astounding: they BOTH came back at an even $330,000.

That made the decision even harder!

At least the first time around, they could have chosen the higher offer, since it was $388 higher than the next best offer.  But now, the two offers were identical!

All parties were present, and waiting in the lobby of the real estate office: buyer #1 and buyer’s agent, and buyer #2 and buyer’s agent. 

Imagine back in ancient Rome as a gladiator is about to fight another gladiator to the death, and the two gladiators wait together in the corridor leading to the coliseum floor.  They stand together, make eye contact, react to the crowd noises—and they know that only one of them is coming out of there alive.

That is EXACTLY what being the top two offers in a multiple-offer scenario is like!!!

The two buyers and the two buyers’ agents couldn’t believe the result.  They laughed together, and regained their composure for another go-around.  They would be sent back, again, to improve their offers.

Now this is where many of my readers are going to say, “There’s no way this happened, the laws of mathematics prohibit this.”  Well, say whatever you want when I tell you that BOTH buyers came back at $335,500.

No joke.

The standard “add-on” is about $5000, and they clearly both thought that would suffice.  But they both figured that if the other buyer was thinking along the same lines, that they should add a few hundred bucks to their $5000, and thus added $5,500 to come in at $335,500.

Well, by the time the listing agent dealt with both offers, the buyers were distraught.  The agent said, “We have no choice, there’s nothing we can do here….we have to send you both back, again!”

That is when one of the buyers remarked, “Geez, we should just flip a freakin’ coin!”

At first, the remark was met with the obvious laughter it deserved.  But since this process had effectively come down to a virtual coin-flip, and since improving their offers once again would surely cost the eventual buyer another $5,000, the two parties actually agreed to flip a coin!

The listing agent was vehemently against it, since he wanted more money for his clients, but the two buyers were so angry that they offered over the asking price and had to add money to their offers TWICE, that they were content to forego the THIRD send-back, and let a coin decide their fates, saving $5,000 in the process.

This is where my lunch buddy was called into action.  They needed an impartial party to administer the coin flip (I’m thinking that the listing agent and the seller were also impartial, but I digress…), and so my friend was thrust into the fray.

I can’t help but picture George Costanza from Seinfeld and wonder if anybody called “interference” as the coin bounced off the counter…

When that coin was in the air, it must have been the longest 0.75 seconds of their lives.

When the coin came up “tails,” and buyer #1 was awarded the house at the $335,500, he held his composure, and shook the hand of buyer #2 and his agent.

Like I said from the beginning: this story is somewhat hard to believe.  I’m not calling my friend a liar, and at the same time, her accounting of the events and the numbers involved were so precise that I’m not sure how it could be embellished.

But I can’t help but wonder what I would have done in that situation, both from the buyer’s perspective, and the perspective of the buyer’s agent…