What are preemptive, or bully offers, and are they worthwhile?

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What is a preemptive offer, also known as a bully offer? In today’s market, Toronto is pretty competitive. A lot of sellers are listing their homes and making an offer date to try to create a bidding war. A bully offer is when a buyer makes an offer on a property prior to the offer date.

One advantage buyers have when making a bully offer is that if the seller is willing to deal with them on that night, they won’t be competing with other buyers. The disadvantage to the seller is that they could maybe get a higher offer if they wait until the offer date. I always advise my clients to at least look at the bully offer to see what the number is.

One property that we recently sold was listed for sale in the morning and we had a preemptive offer at about 6 p.m. that same day. It far exceeded our expectations and was probably about $150,000 higher than we had anticipated even going on the offer date. My clients decided to accept the offer. I called back a lot of the agents the next day who had interested buyers and none were even close to that number. That was a good decision for those clients.

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