Exclusive or non-Exclusive purchase offer?
I keep seeing the "non-exclusive offer to purchase" contract being referenced to by TCI members.
Wouldn't the "non-exclusive" open you up to the possibility of an interested buyer going over your head to the seller. Or the seller catching on to how easy things could be handled and cutting you out to do it himself?
[addsig]
I have seen the terms exclusive and non-exclusive only in the context of a listing agreement with a real estate agency. An exclusive listing agreement means that the real-estate agency has the sole right to offer your property on its own and also to complete the business case. It means that you as the owner do not advertise your offer yourself in most cases.
A non-exclusive listing agreement means that you as the owner can offer the property to several real-estate agencies and also offer the property yourself. You would pay a sales commission only to the agency that actually brought you the buyer. If you find your own buyer, you do not owe anyone else a sales commission.
In the context of a purchase offer, the word exclusive does not mean anything to me. Submitting a purchase offer does not prohibit the seller from considering any other offers while your offer is pending. In fact, if your offer does not contain an expiration, the seller could keep your offer in his pocket for quite awhile until he decides that a better offer is not going to come in -- only rejecting your offer when he has a better offer in hand.
If, on the other hand, the word exclusive in your purchase offer means that you will be submitting other offers on other properties, I do not see how that affects a seller. Once you have submitted an offer to purchase, and the seller accepts it, you have a binding legal document.
[ Edited by DaveT on Date 02/07/2003 ]