Intero Real Estate Blog

posted by Ed Gory of the Intero San Carlos office

Now, this just sounds insane, or maybe I should have started it as “I never thought this would happen to me, but…”

It’s mind boggling, but the notion of multiple offers – particularly on the lower 1/3 of the market here in the Bay Area– is as prevalent now as it was 3 years ago. Now granted, the affected market segment is much more specific – I don’t really see this happening much on the higher end of the market (above $900K). But now that lending has thawed a bit from the catatonic state it was in Q4/’08 and Q1/’09, there are a TONS of investors and first time home buyers that are scooping up homes once priced in the $500K+ range which are now priced in the $200K-300K range.

There’s a huge “dang, this is a bummer” element for any agents like myself, representing buyers who keep getting outbid, or beat to the punch by others making offers on homes the day they come on the market.  It seems like in Q4/Q1, that a home would come on the market, and the buyer mentality was “I’ll just wait 2 months, and they’ll be lowering their list price”.  That scenario is long gone. My recommendation to any buyer out there is this: if a home seems priced ‘right’ (totally subjective), don’t wait to make an offer on it, because chances are someone else will. What about making lowball offers? Don’t even bother, as the window where you could go into contract offering 10% or more, below the list price has pretty much shut for good.  Lowball offers? You might as well just stand on the rooftop and say “I don’t really want this house.” Don’t try it, as that train left the station in Q1.

So back to the 89 offers.

So I (representing a buyer) present a good, slightly over asking price offer on an REO (bank-owned) home in South San Jose.  Couple days later, an automated email from the listing agent comes back saying they’re doing a multiple counter-offer, to ALL of the 72 offers they received.  I go to check the Listing Agent’s listing updates on Twitter, and they now have 89 offers. I wouldn’t make that up if I tried. Eighty….nine…offers.

I then picked up my jaw from desk upon which it hit….

Although this was a situation I thought I would never see, I was very impressed with listing agent’s usage of Twitter. Many of these foreclosure-specialist listing agents have 20, 30, 100 listings – all foreclosures – they are juggling all at the same time. Updating the status on a bulk amount of listings in MLS could be a time-consuming task. Using Twitter, the agent was able to give a ‘to-the-minute’ update announcing if offers were submitted to the bank, or if they are in counter-offer with a buyer, or if they’re taking no more offers, etc.

But back to multiple offers, no matter what you read, the market in many instances around the Bay Area, is showing PLENTY of signs of life.  Yes, things slowed down early in the year, as did almost every micro-market in the world. But even between the price points of $800K – $1.3M, there are homes that are going into contract within 2 weeks of coming on the market. It’s becoming less and less of an anomaly. Ultimately, if a house is priced right based on its location, it will sell.

See Also

• Ed Gory – Realtor
  Persistence. Focus. Dedication. 650.622.1034