The Ifs, Ands or Buts

This gave something to everyone. The buyers would still have nearly four months to sell their current home. The sellers would be assured that they would close in February.

"If you are making a contingent offer, you need to convince the seller that you are highly motivated to sell your [current] house," Fairweather said. "We needed to see that."

Marc Fleisher, a real estate agent with the Friendship Heights office of Long & Foster, takes a similar approach. When one of Fleisher's sellers receives a contingent offer, the agent goes to work, taking a close look at the price the buyers are asking for their own home. If that price doesn't seem reasonable, Fleisher asks the buyers to lower it. If the buyers refuse? Fleisher advises his client to walk away from the offer.

"There are certain stipulations that you need to put with a contingent offer," he said. "In any home-sale contingency being considered, we put in language stating that the home must not be priced to exceed a certain level. I'll take a look at the property personally before making any recommendations to my sellers."

Fairweather, too, examines a buyer's asking price before advising her sellers to consider an offer with a home-sale contingency. A compromise might state that the sellers will consider the contingent offer for 30 days while the buyers try to sell their existing home at the original price. If the buyers do not receive an offer during those first 30 days, they then must make a specified reduction in the asking price. If in two more weeks there is still no offer, then the buyers are required to cut the price again.

Buyers who agree to such stipulations prove that they are motivated, Fairweather said.

"The seller controls his own house and the price he puts on it, how well it shows, how easy it is for agents to get in. When he accepts a contingent offer, he has now tied his life to another property where he doesn't control the price, the condition it shows in, the access to it and how easy it is for agents to show it," Fairweather said. "He doesn't control any of the marketing or the quality of the agent the buyer is working with. That's why you need to offer the seller protection when dealing with contingent offers."

Some agents still advise their sellers to avoid contingent offers if at all possible. Melinda Estridge, an agent with Long & Foster's Bethesda office, is one.

"The simple fact is, if someone buys a property with a contingency, that person is almost always less motivated to sell a home," Estridge said. "For them, if it doesn't work out they can stay where they are and re-evaluate. If they receive less money for their property than they expected, they can try to renegotiate with the seller, who is now in a more precarious situation. I always tell my sellers that if they take a contingent offer, there is only a 50/50 chance of it working out."

Estridge also coaches buyers to avoid the situation in which they must make contingent offers. She instead recommends that they put their home on the market, get it under contract and negotiate a long-term or flexible closing date, one that gives them enough time to search comfortably for their next home.

David Rainey, a real estate agent with the Mount Vernon office of Weichert Realtors, agrees that non-contingent offers are best for sellers. That doesn't mean, though, that contingent offers should automatically be dismissed.

The key to working out a good deal is to approach the sale as a business decision, not an emotional one, he said.