Sell That House — Stat!

While not even 4 percent of U.S. home listings set a deadline for offers — and many of those are notated in private agent comments rather than published publicly — Redfin says this strategy pays off. In its analysis of 37 major metropolitan areas, the broker discovered that 58 percent of home listings with published offer deadlines this year fetched more than the asking price. Such listings also averaged 31 days on the market, or roughly half the time of listings with no published deadline. Deadlines help people to focus and make decisions more quickly, according to Duke University behavioral economics professor Dan Ariely — who says the more public the deadline, the more pressured people feel to act. The downside, he adds, is that deadlines — usually giving buyers just a few days to make a bid — are not enforceable. While a deadline allows sellers to review all offers at once, expresses confidence in the listing, and often sets off a bidding war, agents can accept offers at any time during the listing. However, Rebecca Schumacher with Sotheby’s International Realty says this represents “an embarrassment to the agent representing those buyers, and it’s not good for agent-to-agent relationships.” | Read More