Got an Unsolicited Offer?

A letter shows up offering to buy your mineral rights for a specific dollar figure. Before you sign or toss it, that number tells you more than it looks like at first glance.

Unsolicited offers aren't inherently predatory, buyers legitimately use public county records to identify mineral owners and send letters, and some of those offers are fair. But the number on the page is built from an assumption you can't see: a multiple applied to your production, or a per-acre rate applied to your county, chosen by the buyer to work in their favor. The useful move is to reverse the math so you can see what assumption is baked into the letter you received.

This isn't about assuming bad faith. It's about not being the only party in the negotiation who doesn't know how the number was built.

Reverse-engineering the multiple

If your interest is producing and the offer is a lump sum, divide it by your average monthly royalty check to get an implied multiple. An offer of $18,000 against a $300/month check implies a 60-month multiple, five years of income. Compare that to what similar producing interests in your play typically trade for, often somewhere in the 30 to 90 month range depending on the well's age, remaining decline, and current commodity prices, and you'll immediately know whether the letter is offering you a rich multiple or a thin one.

If the offer is per-acre against a non-producing tract, the same principle applies differently: compare the offered rate to recent comparable lease bonuses or sales in your county, which our calculator pulls in as part of building your own range.

Why unsolicited offers often lean low

Buyers who mail cold offers are typically working a large list of owners across a county or play, and their business model depends on a meaningful share of recipients signing without shopping the number elsewhere. That's not illegal or even necessarily deceptive, it's just how volume-based buying works, and it means the first number offered isn't always the best number available.

It's also worth noting that some mailed offers are entirely fair, especially from established buyers who've priced based on recent comparable activity. The only way to know which kind of letter you're holding is to check it against an independent estimate, not to assume either way.

What to do before responding

Run your acreage, decimal interest, county, and recent royalty (if producing) through our calculator to get your own range. If the mailed offer falls within or above that range, it's likely a fair number. If it falls meaningfully below, that's useful leverage, either to negotiate with the original buyer or to solicit a competing offer, including from us.

Don't sign anything under a deadline pressure tactic. Legitimate offers generally hold for a reasonable period, and if a letter pushes urgency ('this offer expires in 5 days'), treat that as a signal to slow down and verify the number rather than speed up.

Getting a second number

Send us the same details from the offer letter, county, acreage, decimal interest, production status, and we'll give you our own number to compare, no obligation to sell to us over the original buyer. Having two offers in hand is the single best negotiating position a mineral owner can have, whether you end up selling to either buyer or holding instead.

If the two numbers land close together, that's a good sign the original offer was fairly priced. If they diverge meaningfully, ask the original buyer directly what assumptions they used, remaining well life, current commodity price deck, comparable sales, since a legitimate buyer should be able to explain their number rather than simply restating it.