Got an Unsolicited Offer?
A letter arrives out of nowhere offering to buy your mineral rights, with a number attached and a deadline that makes it sound like this is your only chance, and that framing alone should be the first thing that gives you pause.
Unsolicited mineral offers are a normal part of owning Alabama mineral rights, and they are not automatically a scam. Legitimate buyers do send cold offers, sometimes because public leasing or permitting activity flagged your county as one worth pursuing. But an offer arriving unprompted, with pressure to respond quickly and no real explanation of how the number was reached, is exactly the situation where getting a second opinion before signing matters most.
We benchmark unsolicited offers for owners all the time, at no cost and with no obligation to sell to us. If our number comes in close to what you already have in hand, that is useful confirmation. If it comes in meaningfully higher, that is worth knowing before you sign anything away.
Why Cold Offers Are Often Priced Low
A buyer sending mail offers to a large list of owners across a county is typically working from public records and general area assumptions, not your specific production history, decline curve, or operator. That approach tends to produce a conservative number aimed at owners who will not check further, and it is not necessarily a bad-faith number, just an efficient one for the buyer's process rather than one tailored to your interest.
We build our numbers from your actual documentation whenever you can provide it: recent check stubs, a division order, or even just the well name if you know it. That specificity is usually what separates a benchmarked, informed offer from a generic mailer.
Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign Anything
Ask what the offer is based on. If the answer is vague, that is telling. Ask whether the deadline is real or manufactured, since a genuinely fair offer does not usually depend on you signing within 48 hours. Ask whether the buyer is purchasing the mineral interest outright or something else entirely, like an option or a lease, since the language in these mailers is not always as straightforward as it reads.
It is also worth checking whether the offer covers your full interest or only a portion, and whether it references the correct legal description and county for what you actually own. We see mismatches here more often than owners expect.
Getting a Second Number Costs You Nothing
Send us the offer along with whatever ownership documentation you have, and we will give you our own honest read on whether it looks fair, low, or generous, based on the same production and title factors any serious buyer should be using. There is no obligation to sell to us, and no cost to ask. Owners who take this step before signing rarely regret the extra day or two it takes.
What a Genuinely Competitive Process Looks Like
If you have received one unsolicited offer, it is reasonable to assume you could receive others, since buyers working the same county records often send letters to overlapping owner lists. Rather than accepting the first number, some owners choose to solicit a second or third opinion deliberately, which can be as simple as reaching out to a couple of buyers with the same documentation and comparing what comes back.
We are comfortable being one of several offers you gather rather than insisting on exclusivity, and we would rather earn your business on a fair number than on being the only option you considered.