Listing Agent Hubris(?): Pre-Announcing Multiple Offers
“This is a MUST SEE QUICKLY! It will not last, priced to sell quick and/or in multiples.”
–Excerpt, recent new listing in Eden Prairie.
“Seller allowing showings to start on Friday. All offers to be reviewed on Monday noon. Priced to sell to best offer on Monday.”
–Excerpt, recent new listing in Plymouth.
Call me old school, but the sequence for multiple offers that I’m familiar with is:
Step #1: Put home on the market.
Step #2: Buyer showings begin.
Step #3: Offer #1 received.
Step #4: Offer #2 received.
At that point — and only at that point — the listing agent (representing the Seller) typically contacts all interested parties (including the two Buyers who’ve submitted offers) to inform them that the home is in multiple offers.
Part 2: announce the deadline for Buyers to submit their “highest and best” offer — usually, within 48 hours.
“Ready, Fire, Aim” — Multiple Offer Version
Now contrast that with the new protocol for handling multiples — as practiced by at least some agents — in today’s super-tight, inventory starved housing market:
Step #1: Announce multiple offers (or that “the house is priced for multiple offers,” “expects to be in multiple offers,” etc.)
Step #2: Put home on the market.
Step #3: Buyer showings begin.
Step #4: Offer #1 received (or not).
Step #5: Offer #2 received (or not).
The shuffled order makes me think of Thomas Wolfe’s updated version of “getting to first base” (as in, stages of dating) in his novel, “I Am Charlotte Simmons.”
Due to its X-rated nature, I can’t reproduce all four steps here.
Suffice to say, according to Wolfe’s re-ordered steps, “getting to home” is . . . the two partners telling each other their names.
