RE: Buying in a hot market.

[dr.girlfriend]

This may be a rookie question, but what is the reasoning behind accepting an offer or not taking further offers before even an open house? I can understand if someone thinks the house won't appraise for higher offers, but what if someone would have offered a higher cash offer or something? I'm just puzzled by this as a strategy; I don't see the upside for the seller.

[sakoro]

Jan 13, 2022 23:19:56 GMT -5 dr.girlfriend said:

This may be a rookie question, but what is the reasoning behind accepting an offer or not taking further offers before even an open house? I can understand if someone thinks the house won't appraise for higher offers, but what if someone would have offered a higher cash offer or something? I'm just puzzled by this as a strategy; I don't see the upside for the seller.

They don’t have to clean, stage and do an open house. They won’t have tons of people walking through and possibly stealing items.

[seeyalater52]

Jan 14, 2022 1:16:10 GMT -5 sakoro said:

Jan 13, 2022 23:19:56 GMT -5 dr.girlfriend said:

This may be a rookie question, but what is the reasoning behind accepting an offer or not taking further offers before even an open house? I can understand if someone thinks the house won't appraise for higher offers, but what if someone would have offered a higher cash offer or something? I'm just puzzled by this as a strategy; I don't see the upside for the seller.

They don’t have to clean, stage and do an open house. They won’t have tons of people walking through and possibly stealing items.

And if the first offer is strong (and especially if it has a short expiration date), it is also a “bird in the hand” situation. Those buyers could walk away if the seller decides to see what else is out there and they could end up without other offers or with less favorable offers to choose from. In our hot market at least there is pressure as a buyer to keep it moving and not lose a lot of time on situations that might not work out.

[Susie]

Jan 13, 2022 23:19:56 GMT -5 dr.girlfriend said:

This may be a rookie question, but what is the reasoning behind accepting an offer or not taking further offers before even an open house? I can understand if someone thinks the house won't appraise for higher offers, but what if someone would have offered a higher cash offer or something? I'm just puzzled by this as a strategy; I don't see the upside for the seller.

It wasn't our choice when we sold last spring, but I completely get the desire.

Getting our house ready for showing weekend was a huge amount of work.  More than I expected, and I'm a "house person"!  When you get it ready for listing photos, you can move random things out of shots, but for showings every room has to be perfect at the same time.  When IRL do you ever do that, that you don't have SOMEWHERE (guest room, a closet, etc.) to stuff random things?  Add any kids or pets to the situation, and it gets challenging fast.  I had H take the kids & dog to his parents from Friday night to Sunday night.  Then I was gone all day Sat/Sun (I hung out at my office) while we had showings.  Not everybody can do that.

Especially during covid.  Covid limits sellers' ability to clear out of their homes (there are so few "safe" places to go, esp. if you have unvaxxed kids <5), and makes it less appealing than even normal times to have a stream of people in your house.

If I had an above-asking offer before we showed, IDK if I would've gone through with it.  Once we started the showing weekend, we kept it going even after we got an offer (all offers received were over asking), but by then we'd done all the hard work.

Because of covid we did not do an open house, even though I always envisioned we would if we sold.  I attended two as a buyer, and they were a PITA.  One group in at a time, maybe two if the house has distinct areas and people can distance.  (This may differ depending on prevailing norms in a given geographic area.)  It was cleaner just to do showings by appointment, in as condensed a time period as possible.  We did back to back to back showings all day Sat/Sun, and chose from offers on Monday.

[ny96]

Jan 13, 2022 23:19:56 GMT -5 dr.girlfriend said:

This may be a rookie question, but what is the reasoning behind accepting an offer or not taking further offers before even an open house? I can understand if someone thinks the house won't appraise for higher offers, but what if someone would have offered a higher cash offer or something? I'm just puzzled by this as a strategy; I don't see the upside for the seller.

Our next door neighbor is selling her house. She was talking to my husband yesterday and told him that the staging was going to cost $14,500.

[scm1011]

Jan 14, 2022 8:38:43 GMT -5 seeyalater52 said:

Jan 14, 2022 1:16:10 GMT -5 sakoro said:

They don’t have to clean, stage and do an open house. They won’t have tons of people walking through and possibly stealing items.

And if the first offer is strong (and especially if it has a short expiration date), it is also a “bird in the hand” situation. Those buyers could walk away if the seller decides to see what else is out there and they could end up without other offers or with less favorable offers to choose from. In our hot market at least there is pressure as a buyer to keep it moving and not lose a lot of time on situations that might not work out.

This. When we put our house on the market this summer we got a strong offer (~$140k over asking) the day our house went on the market (a Thursday) that expired 48 hours later. We decided to take it and cancel the open houses. It was more than our "reach" goal and we didn't want to push our luck. No regrets!

[Cappy]

Jan 13, 2022 23:19:56 GMT -5 dr.girlfriend said:

This may be a rookie question, but what is the reasoning behind accepting an offer or not taking further offers before even an open house? I can understand if someone thinks the house won't appraise for higher offers, but what if someone would have offered a higher cash offer or something? I'm just puzzled by this as a strategy; I don't see the upside for the seller.

In our situation (as sellers) we were under tight timeline bc we would lose our new house without removing the sales contingency on the old home by a certain date. We had to take the quickest path bc we needed our equity to roll to qualify on the mortgage. This wasn't recently but just throwing it out there as a possible situation/explanation. We probably lost out on 10-20k more profit but got into the house with the dual close we needed.

[vmars]

Jan 13, 2022 23:19:56 GMT -5 dr.girlfriend said:

This may be a rookie question, but what is the reasoning behind accepting an offer or not taking further offers before even an open house? I can understand if someone thinks the house won't appraise for higher offers, but what if someone would have offered a higher cash offer or something? I'm just puzzled by this as a strategy; I don't see the upside for the seller.

We did this as a seller. Our house has been on the market in 2019 and we couldn’t sell it. Our neighborhood had become mostly Jewish orthodox with very large families. We had the smallest model home in the neighborhood and most did not want at 3 bedroom home. We only got one really low ball offer that we rejected. We took it off the market and 2 years later in 2021 a realtor in our neighborhood had a buyer for us. They offered us almost $200k over our first offer 2 years ago. It was plenty of money to get to where we needed and way more than we ever hoped for. We also didn’t need to pay for a realtor, just theirs, which was a cost savings to us. I think it was 100% the right call for us. The following week we were able to get an offer accepted on our dream home with no negotiations or competing.