How do I keep my competitor from screwing up this project for us?
Hi all,

I thought about posting this to /r/smallbusiness but thought you may have special insight.  My company services a very unique niche in the RE rental market and has partnered (unofficially) with the owners of a multifamily property to lease up to clients in our space while giving us the option to buy the building.  We don't have anything in writing and all discussions have been verbal only. We're still haggling over price at the moment so don't have anything on paper.

&amp;#x200B;

The problem: Our competitors are about three times our size and 10x better capitalized and have torpedoed real estate deals we've been involved in in the past. I'm talking expressing zero interest and making no offers on a property until they discover we're marketing it and then coming in with all cash, over list offers just to keep it out of our hands.

To fill this building we are going to have to "go wide" in our marketing and target our competitor's customers. They will inevitably find out what we're up to and we want to have something in place that prevents them from screwing up this project for us.

Outside of a sales contract (as a said, we don't have a final price yet) is there another document I can ask the owners to sign to prevent our competitors from screwing with this opportunity.  Once they catch on to us they won't have a choice but to try and mess it up for us. Thanks for reading!
[{"id": "etgz46l", "text": "You need a purchase agreement with a long ass IP to allow for lease-up (if they'll go for it, I'd structure this as the *later of* *1. X number of days* or *2. X% occupancy*) and a *Right of First Refusal* clause to protect against your competitor(s). Just have your shit together so you can perform within the contract and actually close as, based on what you said, your competitor is going to outbid you. In this industry, he with the most horsepower almost always wins.\n\n&amp;#x200B;\n\nEdit: There are about 400 other moving parts to this and details that would need to be known to really understand what's going on. Are you a broker on the deal? If so, why not just protect yourself on the fee side? If competitor wants to pay over market, cool. Let them pay too much and get a bigger fee.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]