Most sellers expect the hard decision to be the list price. More often it is this one. A strong offer arrives before your offer date, well above asking, and you have to choose between the sure thing in front of you and finding out what else is out there.
Our seller faced that on day six. The offer was $2,200,000 on a home listed at $1,495,000. She could have signed it that afternoon. She waited 24 hours instead. Seven more offers came in, and the home sold for $2,625,000. Waiting was worth $425,000.
Our seller was the executor of a friend's estate rather than a family member selling a home she had lived in. As an executor you make decisions for someone who is no longer here to weigh in, and the result belongs to other people.
The property was a 1922 detached home in Forest Hill. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, 1,245 square feet, a garage at the end of a long driveway, and a level garden with a mature Monterey cypress. It had been well maintained for years, then left alone for a few months. By late May the contents were cleared and the house sat empty.
She found us through her own research online and called after reading reviews. Her situation was easy to state and harder to solve. The property had to be sold, she wanted the best price the market would give, and she wanted it listed soon. She also said plainly that she could not name a target number, because she did not know the market well enough to have one.
The house needed cosmetic work, not construction. We refinished the original hardwood floors, painted inside and out, updated the lighting, rebuilt the front and back gardens with new plants and irrigation, repainted the deck and entry door, and staged the house.
We left the kitchen alone. It was dated but sound, and a full remodel on a two bedroom home this size would not have returned what it cost. Knowing what to skip is as much of the job as knowing what to fix.
Prep came to roughly $40,000, and the estate paid none of it up front. We used a Concierge loan through Side, our brokerage partner, which covered the work and was repaid out of the proceeds at closing. For an estate this matters more than for most sellers, because estates are often short on cash even when the property is valuable.
Danielle managed the vendors, the schedule, and the design calls herself, down to paint colors and staging. That work is invisible in the final photos and it is much of the job.
We listed at $1,495,000 on July 8.
If you are new to selling here, that looks like an error next to a $2,625,000 sale. It is not. Pricing below expected value is standard practice in San Francisco. Danielle has called it the "eBay pricing strategy": list under market value, draw more buyers, and let them compete the price up toward what the home is actually worth.
It cuts both ways. The same approach that works for sellers is what makes buying here maddening, because a list price tells a buyer very little about what a home will cost. She wrote about that in Let's Talk about List Price, Baby (way back in 2013 - this is not a recent practice) and also covers it in this short video. Worth a quick watch!
On July 14, a week ahead of our planned offer date, a buyer submitted $2,200,000.
That was a strong offer. Well above list, clean, and the kind of number that ends a lot of sales on the spot. Accepting it would not have been a mistake.
Danielle recommended waiting. Several buyers had taken disclosures and expressed interest in making an offer. Accepting a preemptive offer would have closed the door on them before they had a chance, and it would have meant never learning what the house was actually worth to the market. She asked those buyers to submit by the following day.
There was real risk in that. Buyers who write preemptively are usually trying to avoid competition, and being asked to wait can send them away or bring them back lower. We had no guarantee anyone else would match $2,200,000, let alone beat it. Nobody involved expected the number the house eventually reached. Our seller agreed to wait.
Seven more offers arrived the next day. Eight in total.
The home sold for $2,625,000, which is 176 percent of the list price and $425,000 above the offer she nearly signed. It went into contract on July 15, seven days after listing, and closed on July 30.
At $2,108 per square foot, it is the highest price per square foot of any single family home sold in Forest Hill this year. The next highest is $1,582, about 25 percent lower. The $40,000 in prep was repaid at closing out of the proceeds.
See the full listing for 1985 8th Avenue.
Our seller wrote a review after closing. She began with where she was when she first called us.
Earlier this year I was left with the responsibility of managing the estate of a close friend. When it came to putting her beloved home in Forest Hill up for sale I felt completely overwhelmed by the task ahead. I reached out to a few agents who were well reviewed and were active in that market in San Francisco. From my first interaction with Danielle, I was impressed by her calm demeanor and approach, which immediately relieved my apprehension and made the process seem more manageable.
[...] I believe Danielle's pricing skills, her marketing skills and her extensive overall experience were responsible for this very successful sale, and I could not be happier with my experience of working with her.
From our seller's review on Google.
An early offer is information, not a verdict. It tells you demand is real. It does not tell you where demand stops. Before you sign one, ask your agent directly: what happens if we let this run its course, and what do we lose if it goes badly?
Count who has taken disclosures. That number is the closest thing to a live measure of interest before offers arrive. It is the difference between a hunch and a reason.
You may not need cash to prepare the home. Programs that front the cost of prep and recover it at closing exist, and they are especially useful for estates and trusts holding an asset with little cash behind it.
Decide what not to fix. Money spent on the wrong project is gone. On a smaller home, a full kitchen remodel is often the wrong project.
You do not have to understand the market. Our seller did not, and said so plainly. What you need is someone who will tell you what they actually think, including when the safe choice is also the expensive one.
None of this means an early offer is always the wrong one. Sometimes it is the best offer you are going to see, and taking it is the right call. The point is that you should know which situation you are in before you sign. We wrote a fuller guide to that decision: Should You Accept a Pre-Emptive Offer on Your San Francisco Home? covers when to take the early offer, when to hold out, and the questions to ask your agent before you decide.
If you are thinking about selling, or you are handling a property for an estate or a trust and are not sure where to start, we would be glad to talk it through. There is no cost and no obligation, even if a sale is a long way off. Get in touch here.
More of our San Francisco case studies: selling an inherited family home in Bernal Heights and deciding whether to sell as is or fix up first.
Sale data from SFARMLS. Every situation is different. The results described here reflect this property, these clients, and the market at the time, and are not a prediction of what any other home will do.
