Why Accepting the First Eminent Domain Offer Is Almost Always a Mistake?
(And What a Marshmallow Has to Do With It)
93%
What do you think that number means?
93% is the share of landowners who accept the first offer—or something close to it—in eminent domain cases involving Texas pipelines.
Not because the offer was fair. Not because they negotiated. Simply because they took what was put in front of them.
There's a study that reminds me of this. It has nothing to do with land.
The marshmallow test
In the 1960s, researchers sat young children down at a table, one at a time. On the table: one marshmallow. The deal was simple—eat it now if you want, but wait 10 minutes and you'll get two.
Then the researcher left the room.
Some kids ate it immediately. Others tried to wait—and watching them was apparently fascinating. Some stared directly at the marshmallow, locked in, until the tension became unbearable and they grabbed it. But others did something interesting: they turned their backs to the table. Walked to the other side of the room. Sang to themselves. Found ways to stop thinking about the marshmallow entirely.
When the researcher came back, the patient child received two marshmallows.
The first offer is a marshmallow
When a condemning authority sends you their first offer, they are handing you a marshmallow.
The first offer is no different than that first marshmallow sitting on the researcher’s table. It's real. It's right there. And you can take it—nobody will stop you.
But that offer almost never reflects the full picture—the impact on your remaining land, the reduction in value that ripples out far beyond where the easement actually sits. The first offer is designed to be taken.
And why do condemnors use low-ball offers? Because they work on most people.
Landowners who wait and who work with a good lawyer receive, on average, five to six times more than that first offer.
And then there are the cases that are harder to explain with averages.
One marshmallow, then thousands
A client once received an initial offer of $1,500.
Sit with that for a second. Fifteen hundred dollars, for land that someone had decided was important enough to take.
They didn't sign. They waited. They became my client.
The final recovery was somewhere between $6.5 and $7.5 million.
There's no clean way to calculate how many marshmallows that is. The math stops making sense at a certain point.
Why do 93% take the first offer?
Because the letter is intimidating. Because the other side sounds certain, and certainty is persuasive when you're confused. Because the marshmallow is right there, and waiting feels like a risk.
But you have rights in this process. The system gives you real tools—if you use them.
93% of landowners didn't know that, or didn't act on it in time.
You're reading this, which means you still can.