By Eric Berman, REALTOR® | The Eric Berman Team at Compass
TL;DR:
When several offers arrive on a Long Island home, the highest number is frequently not the best outcome. What a seller actually nets depends on the price, what the buyer asks the seller to contribute toward their agent's compensation — a term that became negotiable per offer in August 2024 — the deposit, the contingencies, and whether the deal survives to closing. New York adds a wrinkle that changes the entire calculus: accepting an offer binds nobody. Until both attorneys approve and contracts are fully signed, usually a week or two later, the sale is not a sale. Sellers who understand that window handle competing offers very differently from those who don't.
Why the Highest Number Often Isn't the Best Offer
Multiple offers arrive on Long Island when inventory in a price band is thin relative to the buyers shopping it, and when a home has been priced and presented to reach that pool during its first two weeks on the market. It happens more often at entry and mid price points, where the buyer pool is deepest, than in the upper bands.
When it happens, the instinct is to sort the offers by price and take the top one. That instinct is wrong often enough to be worth examining every time. An offer is a package of terms, and price is one of them. The seller's actual outcome is what remains after everything else in the package resolves — what the seller contributes, what the buyer can withdraw over, and whether the deal closes at all.
Two offers that look identical on the front page can differ by tens of thousands of dollars in what the seller keeps, and by months in whether the seller ever gets to closing. The rest of this walks through what actually separates them.
The Comparison Line Most Sellers Still Miss
Since August 17, 2024, following the Sitzer/Burnett settlement, buyer-agent compensation is no longer posted on the MLS and is no longer offered automatically as a condition of listing. It is negotiated offer by offer, which means it now shows up as a term inside each individual offer.
For a seller comparing offers, this is the single largest change in a generation, and it is still routinely overlooked. One buyer may ask the seller to contribute two and a half percent toward their agent. Another may ask for nothing, having arranged compensation directly with their own agent. On an $850,000 sale that difference is roughly $21,000 — which means an offer at $845,000 with no compensation request can net more than an offer at $860,000 that asks the seller to cover two and a half percent.
Any offer comparison built only on price is comparing the wrong number. The figure that matters is what the seller nets after compensation, and it has to be calculated offer by offer. Sellers who want the fuller picture of what comes off the top will find what selling actually costs covers every line.
Deposit, Contingencies, and Where Deals Actually Break
Long Island runs on a ten percent deposit, well above the three to five percent that is standard nationally, and it is held in the seller's attorney's escrow account. That convention does real work. A buyer with $85,000 committed behaves differently from one with $25,000 in play, and an offer proposing a deposit below the local norm is proposing a weaker commitment regardless of its price.
Contingencies are where most deals die, and each one is a defined window during which the buyer can withdraw. The financing contingency typically runs thirty to forty-five days and is the most consequential — it is the buyer's exit if their loan does not come through. The inspection contingency generally runs five to ten days. The appraisal contingency matters most on aggressive offers, because a lender will not lend against a number the appraiser will not support.
That last point deserves attention on high offers specifically. When a buyer bids well above the comp set, they are creating appraisal risk for themselves and scheduling risk for the seller. The tool that addresses it is appraisal gap coverage — a term in which the buyer agrees to bring additional cash to close if the appraisal comes in below the contract price, sometimes up to a stated ceiling. An offer at $890,000 with gap coverage is substantially stronger than an offer at $900,000 without it, because the second one is likely to come back to the table asking for a reduction once the appraisal lands.
Financing Types — What Actually Differs
Loan type is a legitimate consideration, and it needs to be handled precisely, because the useful distinctions are about the financing instrument and its process rather than about the buyer.
Cash offers remove the lender from the transaction entirely — no loan approval, no lender appraisal, no financing contingency. That eliminates a category of risk and typically compresses the timeline. It is also worth verifying: a cash offer is only as good as the proof of funds behind it, and the attorney will want documentation.
Among financed offers, the mechanical differences run to appraisal standards and timing. Government-backed programs apply property condition requirements that conventional financing does not, which can mean specific repairs are required before closing on homes with certain deferred-maintenance items. Those requirements are known, they are documented in the program guidelines, and a listing agent can tell a seller what a given home is likely to encounter. Timelines also vary by program and by lender.
What a seller should not do is rank offers by loan category as a proxy for buyer quality. New York's Human Rights Law protects military status — including veterans and reservists — and lawful source of income, among other characteristics. Beyond the legal exposure, the shortcut is simply inaccurate: a well-documented offer from a buyer with a strong lender and a clean file frequently outperforms a conventional offer from a buyer whose approval is thin. The right questions are about this specific offer, this specific lender, and this specific property, and they belong in a conversation with the listing agent and the attorney rather than in a rule of thumb.
The New York Timing Gap That Changes Everything
Here is the fact that most national content about multiple offers gets wrong for New York, and it reshapes how a seller should think about the whole process.
Accepting an offer does not create a binding agreement. In New York, the transaction becomes real when both attorneys have negotiated the contract and both parties have signed. That process typically runs one to two weeks after acceptance. Until it is complete, neither side is committed, and either can walk without consequence.
For a seller receiving multiple offers, this cuts two ways. The exposure: an accepted buyer can change their mind during that window, and it happens. The advantage: the seller is not locked in either, and offers can continue to arrive and be considered until contracts are executed. This is why a backup offer in New York functions differently than in most states — it is less a formal queue position than a live alternative during a genuinely open period.
The practical response is speed. A seller with an attorney already engaged, a title review already done, and disclosure work already handled can move to signed contracts in days rather than weeks, which closes the window in which things unravel. Sellers who wait until acceptance to retain counsel spend two weeks getting up to speed, and that is two weeks a buyer has to reconsider. The case for engaging an attorney before listing rather than after an offer is nowhere stronger than in a multiple-offer situation.
Running the Process
The most common approach when several offers arrive is to set a deadline and invite everyone to submit their best terms by a stated time. It is straightforward, it treats every buyer identically, and it produces a clean comparison.
Two disciplines matter. First, the representation must be accurate — if a seller says competing offers exist, they must exist. Misrepresenting the state of the bidding is a serious problem, and it is also unnecessary, because a genuinely competitive situation speaks for itself. Second, every buyer should receive the same information and the same deadline. Evenhandedness here is both the ethical position and the one that produces the strongest offers, since buyers who sense the process is being run cleanly bid more seriously.
Escalation clauses appear occasionally — terms in which a buyer's offer automatically rises above competing bids up to a ceiling. They can work, but they carry complications. They require the seller to substantiate the competing offer that triggered the escalation, which raises confidentiality questions. They frequently push the price past what the appraisal will support, which reintroduces the gap problem. And in New York, since the binding document is the attorney-negotiated contract rather than the offer, the clause's mechanics need to survive into that contract to mean anything. Worth discussing with the attorney before treating one as a straightforward win.
A Worked Example
Consider a composite case — a Nassau County seller with a colonial listed at $835,000 who received three offers over a single weekend.
Offer one came in at $872,000, financed, asking the seller to contribute two and a half percent toward buyer-agent compensation, standard contingencies, ten percent deposit. Offer two came in at $859,000, financed, no compensation request, ten percent deposit, appraisal gap coverage up to $15,000. Offer three came in at $880,000, financed, asking two and a half percent, a five percent deposit, and a sixty-day financing contingency.
Sorted by price, the order is three, one, two. Sorted by what the seller actually nets and by likelihood of closing, it inverts almost completely. Offer two nets roughly $859,000 against offer one's $850,200 after compensation, and its gap coverage removes the appraisal risk that the comps suggested was real above $865,000. Offer three's headline number was the highest and its structure was the weakest — half the customary deposit and an unusually long financing window, on a price the comp set did not support.
He took offer two. Contracts were signed in six days because his attorney had been engaged since before listing, and it closed on schedule.
Where to Start
Build a net-proceeds comparison for every offer before reacting to any of them — price minus compensation requested, with the deposit, contingency windows, and any gap coverage noted alongside. Have the attorney review the terms, not just the price. Set one deadline and give every buyer the same information. Move fast on contracts once a decision is made, because the window between acceptance and signature is where deals come apart. And keep the underperforming offers warm until contracts are executed, because in New York they remain genuinely live until then.
Sellers wanting a current read on where their home sits before any of this begins can start with a quiet look at present value. More Long Island market and process coverage lives in Local Insights.
The Honest Bottom Line
Multiple offers are a good position, and they are also the moment a seller is most likely to make an expensive decision quickly. The pressure to take the biggest number is real, and the biggest number is frequently not the best one once compensation, deposit, contingencies, and appraisal risk are accounted for.
The discipline is unglamorous: calculate the net on each one, read the terms rather than the headline, treat every buyer the same way, and get to signed contracts as fast as the attorneys can move. Sellers who want to think through a specific set of offers, with no pressure attached, are welcome to start that conversation whenever it suits them.
This is general information, not legal advice. Offer terms, contract negotiation, and questions about how to evaluate or respond to any particular offer should be addressed with a licensed New York real estate attorney.
FAQs
Should a Long Island seller always accept the highest offer?
Not automatically. Price is one term among several, and the seller's actual outcome depends on the whole package. Since August 2024, buyer-agent compensation is negotiated within each offer, so one buyer may ask the seller to contribute two and a half percent while another asks for nothing — a difference that can exceed twenty thousand dollars on a typical Long Island sale and can flip the ranking entirely. Deposit size, contingency windows, appraisal gap coverage, and the strength of the buyer's financing all affect both the net figure and the odds the deal reaches closing.
Is an accepted offer binding in New York?
No, and this surprises most sellers. In New York the transaction becomes binding when both attorneys have negotiated the contract and both parties have signed, which typically happens one to two weeks after acceptance. During that window either side can walk away without consequence. For a seller with multiple offers, that means the other offers remain genuinely live rather than being formally queued behind the accepted one. It also means speed matters — a seller who can reach signed contracts in days rather than weeks closes the window in which a buyer might reconsider.
How much should a deposit be on a Long Island home sale?
Ten percent of the purchase price is the Long Island convention, held in the seller's attorney's escrow account. That is well above the three to five percent common nationally. An offer proposing a smaller deposit is proposing a weaker commitment, and it is a legitimate factor in comparing offers regardless of price. A buyer with a full ten percent in escrow has considerably more at stake if they decide to withdraw, which affects how seriously they treat the contingency windows and the closing date.
What is appraisal gap coverage and why does it matter on high offers?
It is a term in which the buyer agrees to bring additional cash to closing if the appraisal comes in below the contract price, sometimes up to a stated ceiling. It matters most on offers well above the comp set, because a lender will not lend against a value the appraiser does not support. Without gap coverage, an aggressive offer frequently returns to the table asking for a price reduction once the appraisal lands, weeks into the process. An offer slightly lower with gap coverage is often stronger than a higher one without it.
Can a seller consider loan type when comparing offers?
There are real mechanical differences between financing programs — property condition standards, appraisal requirements, and typical timelines vary — and those specifics can be discussed with a listing agent and attorney as they apply to a particular home. What sellers should avoid is ranking offers by loan category as a shortcut for buyer quality. New York's Human Rights Law protects characteristics including military status and lawful source of income, and beyond the legal exposure the shortcut is unreliable: a well-documented file with a responsive lender frequently outperforms a conventional offer with thin approval behind it.
By Eric Berman, REALTOR® | The Eric Berman Team at Compass
Eric Berman | Long Island & Queens Associate Broker | Compass
1468 Northern Blvd, Manhasset, NY 11030
(917) 225-8596 | eric@ericbermanre.com | theericbermanteam.com
