It’s always best to come in first when it comes to buying a house. But if the seller accepts another buyer’s offer on the house you want, there’s nothing wrong with coming in second.

If you ask the seller to hold your offer as a backup, there’s a fair chance you could move up if the first contract falls through. And make no mistake: Deals fall through all the time.

Perhaps the buyer couldn’t obtain financing, or is unable to sell his current house. Perhaps a home inspection revealed problems the buyer doesn’t want to deal with, or that the seller refuses to repair. Or maybe the buyer didn’t meet the contract’s timelines for financing and inspections.

If the house you want is a short sale, which often takes two to four months to complete, there’s always the possibility the buyer won’t want to play the waiting game.

“Four out of five buyers who make offers on short sales eventually pull their offers because they get tired of waiting or they find another house,” reports agent Rich Cederberg of eXp Realty in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I bought a house in Florida a few years ago when the buyer who outbid me backed out. She had thought the house was move-in ready, but it wasn’t. So the bank that had foreclosed on the place came to me, because I had requested that my offer be held as a “just in case” backup.

“We are seeing more homes come back on the market” that had contracts that fell through for one reason or another, says Jeannette Karis, an agent with RE/MAX in Spokane, Washington.

Backup contracts are handled differently in different places. So what follows is a basic discussion of the technique. In such situations, you should align yourself with a quality real estate professional, and perhaps even an attorney versed in real estate law.

Sellers often agree to take other contracts as backup offers as insurance -- a safety net, in you will -- should the accepted offer fall through. This keeps them from having to ever again deal with potential buyers traipsing through their homes. Jane Kontoff, an agent with Keller Williams in Concord, Massachusetts, once listed a property for which the buyer backed out one morning; by the afternoon, the house was under contract with someone else, without ever going back on the market.

Indeed, a backup may be a seller’s secret weapon, used as leverage in keeping the buyer from asking too much in the way of repairs or other concessions.

The mere existence of another offer just sitting there, waiting for the first one to crumble, could have a psychological impact on buyers, pushing them to move forward despite issues they’re not comfortable with. After all, a buyer who plays hardball could end up in a stalemate with the seller, who could decide to hold his ground and move on to the next contract.

Asking for your offer to be held as a backup is a smart move: It doesn’t cost anything, first of all. And if the first buyer’s inspection uncovers significant flaws in the property, the seller has to disclose them, and you will know about them without having to pay for your own examination.

But buyers who find themselves in second place must be careful. If you keep looking at other houses (which you should), and find one you like just as well or better, you could find yourself in the precarious position of having contracts on two places. It’s a good idea to put a time limit on the first offer -- say, 30 or 45 days.

At the same time, a time limit puts added pressure on the seller to swim or cut bait with a first buyer who is stumbling around financing or inspection issues. And if your offer happens to be higher, it could put pressure on the first buyer to move forward because he’s getting a good deal.

Backup buyers also should put a “right of first refusal” clause in their offers. That way, you’ll be first in line if the other deal fails, but you won’t be bound to move forward if your situation changes or other unforeseen issues come to light.

In some places, though, sellers have the right to accept backups right up to the day the first buyer closes. And should one of those backups be without any financing or inspection contingencies, the seller has the right to give the first buyer anywhere from 24 to 72 hours to remove the contingencies in his contract. If the buyer doesn’t, that contract becomes null and void and the seller can move on to yours.

Some realty pros advise against backup contracts because when the first contract fails, the value of house tends to decrease, at least technically. As a result, you could be locking yourself into a purchase price that is too high. At the same time, though, in many markets, values are marching higher every day -- so someone whose backup contract moves up to first could be getting a bargain.

Every landlord has tales to tell about the trials and tribulations of owning rental property. Here are a few of mine:

-- The flood. The house was between tenants when an upstairs water pipe burst. The water cascaded all the way down into the crawl space. After filling that area, it spilled out into the yard, creating a wading pool outside.

I didn’t find out until the four-figure water bill arrived. Fortunately, once I turned the water off, the accumulated water slowly sunk into the ground, and I made the necessary repairs.

-- Here today, gone tomorrow. When I eventually put that same house on the market, I fixed it up nicely, including the addition of a bunch of new shrubs. The day after the bushes were put into the earth, they were gone, just like that. During the night, someone had dug them up, leaving me nothing but gaping holes in the ground.

-- Tell-tale heart, Part I. My tenant was way behind on her rent. (I used to let people slide far longer than I should have: big mistake.) So I filed for eviction, and it took three months for the court to process it. The night before the sheriff was to knock on her door, she called me, crying, “Please don’t toss me out! I’ll pay you tomorrow.”

Bleeding heart that I am, I called off the eviction. Of course, she didn’t pay. And it took three more months with no rent to finally get her out.

-- Tell-tale heart, Part II. One of my tenants died of a heart attack in his bedroom. But sadly, no one knew anything was wrong until his rent didn’t arrive. It took days to locate his next of kin. After the police removed his body, a hazardous waste clean-up crew put the bedroom back in order.

-- Guns drawn. The only time I personally evicted someone, the experience scared the living daylights out of me.

I had rented the place to a man, his girlfriend and their children. The guy eventually split with his girlfriend but continued to pay his rent. He was habitually late, but he paid. And then he stopped. It took me several months to track him down, only to discover that he had declared bankruptcy and moved away. I couldn’t touch him for back rent.

But he had allowed his teenage son to remain in the house, so I still had to file for eviction. When I got the court’s permission, I went to the house, along with two deputy sheriffs. As we were about to bang on the front door, the officers pulled their guns, ready for anything.

I wasn’t ready for that, though. When they flashed their weapons, I ran like a scared rabbit around the corner.

Fortunately, the house was empty, but it had been trashed almost beyond reclamation. I had to completely strip it down and start over.

-- The gallon-gift guy. I once rented a room in a boarding house I owned -- five bedrooms, five tenants who shared the kitchen and living space -- to a fellow who was on unemployment at the time. I took a chance on him because he was willing to take the smallest bedroom in the house. He paid his rent faithfully for a couple of years, and then he stopped. Finally, after a few months with no rent, I told him he had to move, which he did.

Nice guy that he was, he left me a present: 50 or 60 1-gallon jugs full of urine. Rather than rising from his mattress to get to the bathroom, it appeared he’d just used jugs. But he never bothered to empty them.

I donned rubber gloves and a mask and proceeded to empty each one down the toilet. Then I carried the empty jugs down the stairs and into my truck and hauled them off to the dump. To remove the stench from the jugs that had spilled during his stay, I had to replace the room’s hardwood floor.

But the worst part occurred on my last trip down the steps with a handful of empty jugs: I missed the last step and broke my ankle.

Of course, there have been a lot of rewarding moments over the years, too. And not just of the monetary kind. The one I remember most fondly happened around Christmas, when a single-father tenant showed up at my front door with a frozen turkey.

Turns out, his church gave out the turkeys to parishioners and told them to distribute them to people in their lives who had done good by them. Since I had allowed him to be late with his rent, he said, he thought of me as one of those people.

I was really touched. But all in all, I’d say landlording isn’t for the faint of heart.

There’s nothing that ticks off homebuyers more than their lenders taking time off.

They don’t even like it when a lender shuts down for a federal holiday, like most businesses. In fact, according to one recent survey, they don’t like delays at all.

Lenders getting their acts together will help customer satisfaction, says Mike Seminari of the Stratmor Group consulting firm. A former loan officer, Seminari is now the director of MortgageSAT, an interactive customer satisfaction tool for lenders. But borrowers can also take steps to keep the closing process moving smoothly.

For example, as a homebuyer, you can keep up with the bank statements, tax returns and pay stubs your lender will need from you. It can be helpful to have a checklist to work from: “If you don’t get a checklist, ask for it,” says Seminari.

You also should let your lender know what your expectations are: how often the company should be in touch with updates on your application, for instance, and how you want them to communicate -- email, text or phone. Seminari says borrowers who have to call their lenders frequently are among the least satisfied customers. So discuss your expectations up front.

“Coach your loan officer into giving you a better experience,” he says.

As measured by Stratmor’s National Borrower Satisfaction Index for the past 12 months, borrowers became somewhat steamed at their lenders last December. The index dropped two points from November, as back-office staff took time off for holiday parties and shut down completely on Dec. 25 and Jan. 1.

But then a funny thing happened.

Borrower approval of their lenders not only jumped back up in January, but it has stayed at the higher level ever since, despite an increase in loan applications during the spring -- a boom time that might have slowed lenders down and delayed settlements.

“Rather than decline in May 2017,” according to the report, “the average satisfaction score of MortgageSAT lenders remained at 91, a very good score, despite a 28 percent increase in second quarter 2017 origination volume” as projected by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Why such good ratings?

In good news for consumers, the report suggests that lenders now are paying more attention to customer satisfaction. Branches may be actively competing with their back-office crews to show the bosses a better record on borrower happiness.

Hitting closing dates is key, and refinance customers, who have been around the track at least once before, are especially miffed if those deadlines are missed. The satisfaction number for refi customers crashes from 98 to 73 if the lender misses the closing date by more than 30 days.

The ratings by purchase customers, who may be first-time buyers who are new to the game, drop only slightly with that delay: from 94 to 90.

Refi borrowers anticipating lower house payments “clearly are unhappy when that reduction is delayed,” said the report. Another source of animus: Borrowers seeking a cash-out refinance to consolidate credit-card debt “face unanticipated late charges if their loan closes much later than expected.”

On the purchase side, borrower impatience may be lower because closing dates are often keyed to something beyond the lender’s control.

Should borrowers seek out lenders that are better at satisfying their mortgage customers? Is a hometown lender better than a national bank, for instance?

Not really, the study indicates. There’s not a big difference between the giants of the business and smaller, local establishments. Satisfaction may even decrease with the size of the lender. Small lenders generated a satisfaction score of 87: the same as midsize firms, but four points less than national lenders.

There are a couple of other things borrowers can consider when choosing a lender. One is whether the loan officer will attend the closing. Some don’t, and if there is a problem, chances are good the closing will be delayed for hours or even days.

Stratmor not only advises its officers to attend closing, it also warns them to arrive on time. The borrower certainly will, and has often taken time off work to do so.

Another thing lenders should be doing is reaching out to their borrowers in advance of the closing.

“The 86.4 percent of borrowers who recall being contacted before closing -- not a tough thing to do -- recorded a borrower satisfaction score of 93,” the study found. “Compare this excellent score to the low score of 61 recorded by the 8.1 percent of borrowers who said they were not contacted.”

That simple step results in a 32-point satisfaction swing.

-- Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this report.