Offer on Baltimore Property

[Raymond Hunce]

Hello BP Community,

My partner and I put in an offer on a 2 bed, 1 bath single family attached rowhome in Baltimore about 10 or so days ago. This is our first offer ever. We still haven't received a reply on whether the seller is interested in our offer or has a counter offer. Our real estate agent has reached out multiple times and when she does get through, she essentially gets told that we have to continue waiting in the dark. This seems a bit ridiculous and extremely inefficient. We are sitting on our hands for over 10 days, twiddling our thumbs since we only have so much money to start with and we don't want to get caught putting out two offers at once, getting both accepted, and then not being able to finance both in time. This is our first offer so we don't know what's typical. Could anybody let me know if this is typical, what the average time is between putting an offer on the table and getting an answer (or what's reasonable), and what are some ways to make the offering process far more efficient than it is for us right now? Thanks a ton. These forums have already been extremely helpful for me.   

[Ned Carey]

@Raymond Hunce my guess is that the property is an REO. They often wait for the best offer. You can cancel your offer at any time before they accept. An offer is not considered accepted until both signed and communicated back to you that it has been accepted.

The legal theory is you can't be bound by a contract you don't even know you have. So until you are made aware of the acceptance there is no contract even if signed by the other party.

So you can put in multiple offers in and when one is accepted cancel the others. 

In your currents case you can send an addendum to your offer and say it is only good for an additional 24  hours. I agree with Kim. Put in your best offer and then move on. The goal is not to get a specific property the goal is to get great deals.

I am not an attorney the above is my layperson understanding of the law.