Got an Unsolicited Offer?

A letter showed up offering to buy your mineral rights before you'd even thought about selling, and now you're wondering how they found you and whether the number is real.

Somebody found your name on a county deed record, a probate filing, or a division order list, and mailed you a number for minerals you may not have thought about in years. This is normal, not sinister - mineral ownership records are public, and plenty of legitimate buyers work exactly this way, building lead lists from courthouse and state agency data the same way a real estate investor mails homeowners.

What matters is not whether the letter is legitimate, most are, it's whether the number in it reflects what your interest is actually worth. Mailbox offers are frequently the opening bid in a negotiation, not the final word, and treating the first letter as gospel is the single most common way mineral owners leave money on the table.

Why the first offer is rarely the best one

A buyer mailing thousands of letters across a county or a play is fishing, and the economics of that model depend on a percentage of recipients accepting the first number without shopping it. That doesn't make the offer fraudulent, it makes it a starting point calibrated to convert, not necessarily to reflect the top of what your interest could fetch from a buyer who's actually competing for it.

The tell is usually in how the letter is framed - pressure toward a quick response, vague or absent explanation of how they arrived at the number, no mention of comparable sales or activity nearby. A buyer confident in their number usually doesn't mind you shopping it, since they believe it'll hold up.

How to benchmark the number you received

Start with your state's oil and gas regulatory agency records for your county - permits, active wells, recent production - to get an independent read on whether there's real activity near your specific tract driving the offer. If the letter mentions activity you can't verify, that's worth noting.

Then get at least one more quote on the same interest from a different buyer, describing your interest the same way to both so you're comparing apples to apples - same net mineral acres, same royalty fraction if applicable, same county and legal description. The spread between two real offers tells you more about market value than either number alone.

What to say back to the buyer who mailed you

You don't owe anyone an immediate answer, and a legitimate buyer expects you to take time and compare. A simple response asking them to explain how they arrived at their number, and whether they can improve it, tests whether the offer has room or was already their best foot forward - some buyers negotiate, some don't, and you'll learn which kind you're dealing with quickly.

If the offer holds up against comparison and the buyer answers your questions straight, there's nothing wrong with taking it. The goal isn't reflexive distrust of unsolicited offers, it's simply not signing the first thing that arrives without checking it against anything else.

What a legitimate buyer will and won't pressure you on

A legitimate buyer explains their number, answers your questions about how they arrived at it, and doesn't push back hard when you say you want to compare offers elsewhere. Pressure tactics - artificial deadlines, repeated calls, claims that the offer expires in 48 hours - are worth treating as a signal to slow down rather than speed up, regardless of how good the underlying number might actually be.

Take your time, gather a second opinion, and remember that a genuinely fair offer on your interest will still be a fair offer next week.