By Living Room Realty, January 7, 2020
Late Fall-2019 had some echoes of the wild market of Spring-2016: there were a few homes that we toured that got blow up with offers. My client Mateo was considering writing an offer on this cute house in SE Portland. It was a tidy 3 bed, 2 bath located north of SE Powell and east of SE Cesar Chavez, listed at $399,900. After a few days we heard that there were a few offers in and a few more expected. We were talking about writing an offer in the $435k-ish range. Once I heard that offers were pushing into the upper $400’s, Mateo decided not to write. Later we found out that it sold for $540k. What?!? It was nice, but not that nice.
So that was our mentality going into the next few tours: it is going to be competitive so be ready to take a shot or let it go. Then this cute little place came up in North Portland adjacent to Jefferson High School. It did have some limitations, but was at a much better price point. My instinct was that it wasn’t going to get bombed with offers…but there would be a handful. I decided to suggest that we deploy the ‘deterrent offer’ technique. The idea is to write an offer right away that is strong and just a little above asking.
When a competing buyer’s agent calls the listing agent to check the offer status, the knowledge that there is a strong, over asking offer in place can deter other buyers. Yes, you are kind of competing against yourself and there is some risk in that, but my coaching is very calculated and conservative. In this case only one (maybe two) other offer(s) came in and we closed without much drama. It worked!!
