What to Know About Deferred Real Estate Showings
Selling a home requires applying the best strategy for any given situation. One tool that real estate agents, including myself, find incredibly effective are deferred showings.
Deferred showings are a sales strategy where the home is listed in the multiple listing service (MLS) without offering showings of the house for a short time.
Generally speaking, deferred showings are set up to start anywhere from 3 to 7 days after the home is listed in MLS.
A deferred showing can also drive up interest and the price, but it is not a one-size-fits-all tool. As with most things, there are pros and cons to deferred showings.
However, the pros far outweigh the cons for home sellers.
From experience, selling a house in a strong seller’s market without deferring showings is a disservice.
Nearly every home listed using deferred showings has gotten numerous offers with exceptional terms for the sellers I’ve represented.
Many with cash offers and no real estate contingencies. Sometimes sellers review a stack of proposals.
Let’s go over everything to know about delayed or deferred showings.
What Are Deferred Showings?
Most real estate agents will list a house in the MLS and start showings immediately. When it is a buyer’s market, doing so isn’t usually as much of a drawback.
When it is an extreme seller’s market, as it has been over the last several years, marketing traditionally is flat-out DUMB and awful for a seller. Sellers will leave money on the table!
Deferred showings are when a listing agent adds a property to MLS but does not allow showings until a specific date, usually 3-7 days after entering the property online.
There will also be a due date for submitting offers to make delayed showings effective. The seller will not review offers until the specified date.
For example, on all of my properties, I list them on a Monday with delayed showings until Thursday. It will also state in the MLS that offers are due Monday at noon.
No offers will be accepted before that time.
Pros of Deferred Showings
Let’s examine why you should have deferred real estate showings when selling a house.
You Build Demand
When you list a home on MLS for a period before you start showing, you allow many potential buyers to learn about the property. They will see the house listed on one of the best real estate websites.
The more people see the property and are interested in it, the better chance that bidding will begin on the home. As the demand grows, it may be possible to get a great price for the home, maybe even above the asking price.
The theory of having deferred showings is to create a greater probability you will get multiple offers and, therefore, a potential bidding war.
You could easily have an offer on the first day when you sell the traditional way. It might be a reasonable offer, and you accept it. The problem is you will never know if a better offer is coming. Most of the time, there will be!
I’ve had as many as forty-six offers on a home selling with deferred showings.
This is a home-selling tactic I have been using for several years, and it works like a charm. Most of my clients love setting up their homes to have deferred showings for these reasons.
Avoiding Immediate Offers
Real Estate agents have to set reasonable expectations with clients. They encourage pricing homes competitively so that the house is likely to sell.
But playing it safe, while the most prudent strategy, does lead to the possibility of missing out on a higher price. In a competitive market, who knows what the final price could be if bidding started up?
When you show a home right after listing, there is a strong chance that one of the first buyers will come through the door and make an offer early on. The owner may hear the buyer’s offer and be OK with it – reasonable expectations, remember? The home sells but may have sold for more if demand had been higher.
Deferred real estate showings avoid the early offer scenario. Lots of offers come in as soon as the showings start, and hopefully, a higher price is reached.
You’ll Have a Little Extra Time to Finish Odds and Ends
Deferred showings can give you up to a week to take care of any last-minute details that may have been missed before the home was listed.
You may want to list at a particular time to take advantage of market conditions, but a few things still need cleaning up or fixing. Real Estate agents call it staging a house for sale.
With a deferred showing, you get more time to address these issues. While there is no time like the present to get a property on the market, you never want to put your home on the market before it is ready.
First impressions mean everything in real estate sales.
Should an Open House Be The First Showing?
My answer is NO!
One tactic many agents use when setting up a home for a deferred showing also has an open house.
You can put the listing up for 3-7 days and explain in the listing that the first showing will be the open house on a specific date. Frankly, I am not a fan of open houses and probably never will be.
An open house is just that – available open for anyone to enter. This means people with no business looking at the home, including those not financially qualified to spend anywhere near the asking price.
People always ask me whether open houses work, and my answer is always the same. Work for who?
They work great for real estate agents because they can be a terrific opportunity for the agent to prospect for business. One of the neighbors may be thinking of selling their home and stops by for a look to see what the competition looks like.
Strike up a rapport, and bang; this is a prospect for the agent.
More common, however, is the agent picking up buyer clients who can’t afford the asking price. Nonetheless, these buyers could end up buying a home elsewhere. This is the main reason why real estate agents hold open houses.
Beware that many agents who use open houses to prospect for business will not admit this.
Open Houses Are a Magnet For Crime and People Who Don’t Belong
The other big reason sellers should pause when considering whether an open house makes sense is theft. Remember, with deferred showings, you are setting yourself up for potentially many people visiting your home all at once in a 2-3 hour time at an open house.
This creates a situation where an agent could not possibly watch what everyone is doing. Many agents will not discuss the pros and cons of open houses because they don’t want to stop the prospect train from rolling.
The bottom line is that you don’t need an open house when doing deferred showings. There will be plenty of people looking at the home accompanied by an agent, who likely has taken the time to ensure the buyers are qualified.
Trust me, an open house is not worth it. The chance of having something valuable stolen from your home is significant.
Pricing a home correctly and marketing the heck out of it sells homes. The internet is where buyers find homes they want to buy over 92% of the time. It is NOT from riding around and seeing open house signs.
Folks, we are in the digital age, not the 1990s. Open houses are not needed to sell a home!
Remember this……
When multiple buyers arrive on the same day to see the home that they have become so excited about, it is quite possible that multiple offers could come in immediately – especially once buyers realize that other buyers are there as well and also want the home. This is the beauty of deferred showings!
Contract Terms That Have Come From Deferred Showings
Here are some benefits of the contract terms my seller clients have received using this sales strategy.
- Cash offers
- Offers significantly over asking
- No home inspections
- The closing date they wanted
- The ability to rent back for some time.
Cons of Deferred Showings
There are a few downsides to deferred showings.
Relocation Buyers May Miss Out
Some buyers are interested in relocating to an area. These relocation buyers usually only have a small window to view homes, after which they must return to their home area.
If they are coming from out of state and only have a limited amount of time to view homes, then it will be impossible for them to view your listing if your showings don’t start until after they leave.
There is a chance they could purchase another home that doesn’t have deferred showings, even if the house is not as good of a match for what they want. Necessity dictates their actions.
Relocation buyers can make substantial offers on homes due to their situation, so missing out on these buyers could be detrimental to the sale.
No Buyers Can View The Home
Sometimes real estate agents have buyers that they want to show the home to. With regular real estate showings, you can give a personal tour to your buyers, which can have noticeable benefits if you want to sell to a particular party or you are hoping that your buyers are the type to make a reasonable offer.
But with deferred showings, no buyers can view the property early under any circumstances. You must wait to show the home until the period ends, which can prove inconvenient.
These are standard rules when deferring showings. Some states may differ, but this is how it works in Massachusetts.
High Demand Can Be High Stress
Depending on your market and the home being sold, the demand created by a deferred showing can be challenging to manage. In specific markets, you may discover yourself with more showings than you can handle.
When buyers bid on a property, they can become emotionally attached to winning the bid and potentially difficult to work with. You may expect a certain level of demand but find upon showing the home, there is far more demand than anticipated.
Showing the home for the first time at an open house can become particularly stressful. The more people you have milling through the home and throwing offers at you, the tenser the situation can become.
You may get a great offer, but your work will be cut out for you. Be prepared for the stress if you decide to do deferred showings. There really could be a whirlwind of activity at your home for a few days causing you not to be able to be around for extended periods.
All good, though, if you get that offer, you want – right?
Real Estate Agents Should Discuss The Pros and Cons of Deferred Showings
When a real estate agent discusses any marketing strategy with a client, they should always explain the pros and cons. It is essential to remember clients are laymen.
You cannot assume everyone knows the real estate industry (even though some like to think they do). When doing a sales strategy like deferred showings, a client should know the advantages and disadvantages of such an arrangement.
When done correctly, delayed showings can be a tremendous home-selling tactic for homeowners. This should lead to a discussion on how to handle multiple offers.
You Might Have Some Backup Offers Too
Your real estate agent should counsel you on how they suggest getting more than one offer and possibly many more! The losing bidders may even ask if their purchase contract can remain a backup offer if the sale does not work out.
A backup offer is never wrong and can keep you in a position of strength as a seller if your current buyer becomes unreasonable. For example, maybe after their home inspection, they ask you to fix everything under the sun.
In most circumstances, the best way to handle multiple offers is to inform each buyer’s agent that this is the case. You should then instruct the buyer’s agents to have their clients come forward with the best and final offer.
You could not be in a better position from a seller’s standpoint. More than likely, there will be a couple of exceptional options.
Remember that sometimes the highest offer is not necessarily the best. Make sure you carefully look at all the proposed terms in each offer.
Maybe a quicker closing date is appealing to you? Perhaps the buyer has waived a mortgage or home inspection contingency?
These things should be weighed carefully before making a final decision. Just because an offer has the highest price does not necessarily make it the best.
How Deferred Showings Work in Massachusetts
In Massachusetts, when a real estate agent would like to set a property up for deferred showings, it must be reported to the MLS Property Information Network within 24 hours of the listing appearing in MLS.
If you are a Massachusetts seller or real estate agent, here is the deferral of showings form that must be filled out. If you are in another state, checking with a local real estate agent about how disclosure of deferred showings works is essential.
Final Thoughts on Deferred Showings
The proof is in the pudding regarding this sales tactic. The last few homes I have listed for sale in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, have resulted in multiple offers, with the contract price being bid up way over asking.
I have also been involved with this scenario in the last few months while working as a buyer’s agent. One of my buyer clients offered over 70,000 more than the asking price on a property in Framingham, Massachusetts, and did not have the winning bid!
According to the listing agent, the seller had seventeen offers. Talk about being in a prime position. Would the seller have received fifteen offers if the home had been listed traditionally without deferred showings? I seriously doubt it!
If you are a real estate agent outside of Massachusetts reading this and have never heard of deferred showings, you may want to try it.
You may find yourself as a maverick who starts a trend in your market. Sellers will love your efforts when their home potentially gets multiple offers and sells over the asking price.
More Helpful Home Selling Advice
- Key questions from home sellers – Kyle Hiscock shares insights at Active Rain Real Estate Network on what homeowners should ask before selling.
- The importance of hiring a real estate agent – see some tips on the value an agent brings when selling a home via Selling Warner Robbins.
- How does a right of first refusal work in real estate – learn what a ROFR is and how they work via Maximum Real Estate Exposure?
Use these additional resources when selling a home to make wise decisions. An informed seller is the best client a Realtor can have!
About the Author: Bill Gassett, a nationally recognized leader in his field, provided the above Real Estate information on what deferred showings are. Bill can be reached via email at billgassett@remaxexec.com or by phone at 508-625-0191. Bill has helped people move in and out of Metrowest towns for 37+ Years.
Are you thinking of selling your home? I am passionate about Real Estate and love sharing my marketing expertise!
I service Real Estate sales in the following Metrowest MA towns: Ashland, Bellingham, Douglas, Framingham, Franklin, Grafton, Holliston, Hopkinton, Hopedale, Medway, Mendon, Milford, Millbury, Millville, Northborough, Northbridge, Shrewsbury, Southborough, Sutton, Wayland, Westborough, Whitinsville, Worcester, Upton, and Uxbridge MA.
