BRIAN'S BLOG
Toronto Real Estate: What is a Bully Offer?
April 17, 2011
What is a Bully Offer? Basically, if you’re a buyer in Toronto’s competitive real estate market and you find ‘THE house’, chances are there is a date that has been set on which the sellers will be reviewing offers… If you really want the house, you can “bully an offer” meaning that you can push the seller to review your offer early in hopes of avoiding a competitive offer night. Understand though that if you proceed to bully your offer, it better be a good one; firm, no conditions, strong deposit in hand and WELL above the asking price! You have to give the seller a reason to not want to wait until offer day when they most probably will achieve a sale price above their asking price.
As with anything, there are pros and cons to bully offers. For a buyer, it means you have a better chance of getting the house you love even if you pay more for it than you might have if you’d waited for the offer date. If you’re a seller, sometimes bully offers are hard to refuse if the price is right and anyway, who knows if you’d even get multiple bidders on offer night? Definitely tough choices for both the buyer and seller and definitely a popular strategy used by some buyers to ensure they get the house of their dreams!