<p>Background: After about a month of extensive updating, we put our San Jose house on the market yesterday. We are living in a rental and the house is staged beautifully. It is one of the largest in the neighborhood due to a sizable addition in the late 1970’s. There is not a single house like ours within $100k of our price in our zip code and supply is very limited (less than 60 houses for sale in the entire zip code). We listed it low because we have had bad experiences in the past with houses not selling for months and we would be happy if it sold for what we are asking–we have a lot of equity and are moving out of state this summer. Price per square foot is about 3/4 of the average ppsf for our neighborhood. It got a lot of interest at the realtor tour yesterday and has an open house this weekend. </p>
<p>Question: Our agent just called and asked if we were “accepting offers” because someone wanted to make an offer on our house. I said “of course we will look at offers” (thinking “duh”) and she recommended “not opening it up to offers” until Monday or Tuesday. I asked her why and she said if someone is interested, they will be even more interested after they see the buzz that is generated by the open house. This doesn’t make sense to me. I think what she is hoping is for it to get in a bidding war (which makes her look good, it is a very small community). After consulting with H, I told her we wanted her to review and communicate all offers to us starting now. We truly would be happy to get asking price. While it is possible we will be the beneficiaries of a bidding war, is it worth it to refuse to even review offers until next week in the hope that we will go above asking price?</p>
<p>I would really appreciate input, the house is priced about $25k under an appraisal done in 2010 which was before $30k in improvements. I know the value is what a buyer will pay and we would love for it to go higher, but is it worth it to delay offers in hopes of that? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
P.S. As if today is not stressful enough with an S12 waiting for admissions decisions, argh.</p>
<p>not sure where in san jose is but the market there is red hot. a house price correctly should be sold in 3 days. you should sit tight and wait for what the agent’s instuctions. You should not open any bids until the agent say so.</p>
<p>Haha Splash! No, he is our firstborn, I was using S12 to refer to our son who is graduating high school in 2012! Kinda funny, we also have a D15 and a D27 (as in HS class of 2027, she just turned three).</p>
<p>Offers have limited timeframes for acceptance - usually something like 3 days. If you don’t accept it in that timeframe then the offer is no longer valid. This may be why your realtor doesn’t want you to jump on this and have the person wait to write the offer at a time when you may have others coming in which would allow you to review multiple offers. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that you should look at more than just the offer price - you need to see if the offer requires you to include a closing cost allowance and have other costs, and you need to see how much of a down payment the person will put down, whether they’re pre-approved for a loan (not just a ‘likely’ letter), and anything else speaking to the qualifications of the buyer and the exact deal. If you only pay attention to the price you could find yourself and the house locked up for some period of time only to have the buyer fall out due to not qualifying for the loan. Pay extra attention if they’re planning to put down any less than 20%.</p>
<p>OMG, if you’d written D27, I’d have probably passed out. LOL! Okay, got it now. I think I’m so used to seeing DS1 or DS2, etc., that I was just in shock (and feeling really sorry for you because you must be exhausted! )</p>
<p>As for the house, I’m not a realtor, but I don’t understand why your realtor wouldn’t have you consider an offer that someone wanted to make. You can always consider the offer and reject it or counter-offer, right? I just don’t see the harm in it. Maybe someone in real estate can explain why it’s not a good idea. I’m open to learning new things.</p>
<p>Has the person who wants to make an offer seen the house already? The usual process in my area north of San Jose is: MLS on Wed, broker tour on Friday, open house on Sat/Sun, offers on Tues/Wed. However, if someone wants to make a pre-emptive offer before the open house, it usually has to come in above asking. And it will usually have an expiration of 2-3 days, so you might not be able to see what kind of buzz the open house generates, depending on the timing of everything.</p>
<p>I sold my house this way last October. The buyers came through on Thursday, made the offer on Friday, and we signed the contract on Sunday before the 2nd open house. Part of what made us inclined to take the offer was that the Saturday open house attendance was fairly sparse. The offer was about 2% above asking.</p>
<p>There’s no control for this experiment - if you take the first offer you’ll never know if you would have had a better one via the open house. But then again, if it’s a clean offer and you’re happy with the price, you’re already ahead of the game.</p>
<p>Its VERY VERY common in the Silicon Valley to set a date, like a week from the listing date, to “review” offers. The buyer has to wait and they normally do. Multipule offers are common in the most desirable areas, some times more than 12-20 offers can be received before “review date” on the MLS.</p>
<p>…and also, you said your agent initially advised you not to take offers early, and now she’s got a hot offer and wants to present it? Is she bringing in the buyer?</p>
<p>I remember a discussion about this at work. Some thought the asking price means that is how much you want for your house and if offered that amount you will sell it. Others thought the asking price really didn’t have that connotation and if the situation arose you were entitled to try to get more than your asking price.</p>
<p>There is no right or wrong, just different points of view. If it was me I would accept an offer that came in at the asking price, (if there wasn’t some reason to think that negotiations might subsequently break down).</p>
<p>VBallmom, thank you for the link, it has been so busy here that I haven’t had time to read the paper at all when I used to read it faithfully. It was very informative! We are in South San Jose, so the market is not as hot, but it does seem like we priced our house in a way to at least hope for multiple offers.<br>
And many thanks to everyone else, your input has been very helpful. GladGradDad, I will definitely take your advice to look at the “whole” offer and not just the offer price. We had our last house fall out of escrow not once but twice back in 2006 and it was horrible.</p>
<p>Capital Express Way, Story Road and Alum Rock areas still have a lot of foreclosures to absorb. Parts of Downtwon SJ is still in the void, but reviving. Other than that S. SJ should be back to normal now. My aunt just sold hers, she was in the “normal” SSJ area and she sold it in less than 60 days, with one Escrow falled apart.</p>
<p>My friend is looking for a condo in SSJ and has a hard time to find a good one, whereas a year ago it won’t be any problem.</p>
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