Multiple Offers On The Peninsula

Jim Holt, our all-star agent on the Peninsula, has seen of lot of multiple offer situations over the last few weeks.

Recently, there haven’t been a lot of new listings and a lot of buyers have seen everything that’s for sale. So when a nice home comes on the market with a good price, it’s going to get multiple offers and probably sell over list price. This is especially true for entry- and mid-level homes in Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Mountain View.

If you’re bidding on a home with multiple offers, Jim says it’s critical that you lead with your best offer:

You need to approach the offer with the mindset that this is your only shot. It’s likely the sellers will counter only the strongest offers and ignore the rest. Make sure you’re comfortable with the offer price because if you offer is accepted, you don’t want to question if you overpaid. At the same time, you don’t want to be kicking yourself if you lose by only $5,000 – $10,000.

Ignore List Price

Jim’s advice to anyone looking on the Penninsula right now is to forget about the list price:

List price is a meaningless number. If a home is overpriced, it will sit on the market for a while, then sell below list price. If a home is underpriced, it will get multiple offers and sell over list price. Remember, market value is based on what people paid, not what sellers asked. You need to look at sales prices for comparable homes that sold in the last three months. Anything older is too stale to be useful.

What are you seeing in the housing market on the Peninsula?