Short Sales: Multiple Offers or Back-up Offers?

In a short sale situation there has been a lot of confusion as to whether or not more than one offer should be submitted to the bank.  Ultimately that decision is the property owner's decision alone.  All we can do as real estate agents is advise our seller clients of the ramifications of submitting more than one offer to a lender.  In my experience (successfully closed 26 in the past 18 months) it is in the Sellers' best interests not to submit more than one offer at a time to a lender.  Due to the overwhelming workloads at the banks in handling short sales when an additional offer is submitted it tends to bog the process down and can even in most instances start the whole thing over from scratch!  It's important to have a discussion with your seller clients as to the possibility of this happening.  In most instances my sellers have decided to hold additional offers as back-up offers if the buyers are willing to agree to this situation.  If the seller has asked his bank, the bank more than likely will tell the seller that they want to see all offers.  In this case they have no choice but to do so.  Only in that instance is it recommended that multiple offers be submitted.  Be prepared for further delays and fits and starts in the process should you be forced by the seller clients or the bank to submit additional offers.  The other thing to keep in mind with your seller clients and to relay to them is that if they submit an additional offer, the 2nd buyer may not stay in the deal whereas the first buyer has already been there for a length of time.  There is no guarantee that second buyer will stay on board so there is a huge risk that your seller client is taking on.  Bear in mind the one downside to a seller not submitting a higher offer would be the potential of a deficiency judgment being more if the lesser offer is the only one put through.  My favorite line when dealing with this sticky issue is to suggest that my seller client consult with an attorney in dealing with all the ramifications.  Most of the time the Sellers simply tumble to the idea that they would prefer to only take back-up offers and not submit additional offers.