The “Offers Due” Strategy: How to Start a Bidding War on Your Home.

An “offers due” strategy is often used on non-distressed properties that are being sold during a sellers market. There are four reasons for this strategy; two have to do with professional courtesy, one has to do with getting you the most money possible, and the last has to do with finding you a committed buyer. Let me go through them below…

As a professional courtesy, we like to give agents an opportunity to show your home. It’s never unreasonable to think that people may go out of town on the weekend. There is nothing more frustrating, as a real estate professional, than to go out of town for the weekend only to come back and find your client’s dream house came on the market but is now Pending.

By putting an “offers due” date on the MLS, we’re assuring all buyers who want to see it will have the opportunity to do so. Also, if your house is REALLY special and marketed well, people who see your home on the internet will love it. This is not as uncommon as it seems: While they weren’t looking for a home before they saw yours, your home can be the motivator to “get off the fence” and be pre-approved which can take several days. Had you accepted offers on the home in the first few days of marketing, you would have missed out on hearing from these buyers.

Putting an “offers due” date on the MLS goes a long way to set an expectation that we are expecting a bidding war. By setting that expectation up front, we can plant the seed in the mind of buyers that if they want this house they should expect to pay over the asking price.

On the flip side to #3, many times if people feel pressured to make a “right now decision,” they will behave irrationally and come to regret the decision. The last thing we need is to have someone see your home, think that they have to max themselves out to get it, get their offer accepted, but then regret their decision and pull out before they’ve removed their inspection contingency. By giving some extra time, we’re forcing them to “think it through.” We want a buyer who is passionate about your house — we also want a buyer who has had time to completely think through their purchase decision by the time they write their offer.

Of course, you’re the boss, and if you’d like to receive offers “as they come” we can do that as well. We have an ethical obligation to present to you all offers as they come in, so if someone ignores the due date we’ll forward the offer and you’ll have to make a decision on what you’d like to do. Ideally, we like to have a home on the market for two weekends and the week in-between, with “Offers Due” the following Monday at 5pm.