The chance of the seller accepting the bully offer is entirely dependent on the offer price and window of opportunity and I’d say when expecting multiple offers, the possibility of the seller under excellent representation accepting one at $1,000 more than asking is only good if the seller has much to hide. That’s classic buyer beware!
Yeah. If the asking price is absolutely perfect for the home, then $1000 over asking may seem reasonable. However, we all know it's difficult to be 100% accurate in setting the appropriate prices in a fluctuating market. I truly thought $355000 was a reasonable price point, perhaps 1-2% low, so I was hoping to get a bit more than $360000 if I was lucky, but would have been happy with the asking price if that was the only offer I got after a week.
However, the interest in the place went far beyond what I was expecting, so even after the first couple of days I was expecting a multiple offer situation, and thus asking + $1000 didn't seem all that impressive. And indeed, a bidding war is what I got, and the place sold for 7% over asking. OTOH, if interest had been low, with few showings, I would have jumped at the offer of asking + $1000.
Also, for my GF's place, we priced it at exactly what I and the real estate agent felt was fair price. I wanted to again to go maybe 1-2% low to stimulate interest but my GF was not happy with that, so we just went with our best estimate for fair price. It turns out the interest in her unit was even higher than mine. I think she averaged about 6 showings
per day over the week, not including the large number that came for the open house. The place was sold for almost 8% over asking.
I think part of the reason for the interest was just the timing. Weather was excellent at the time, and looking back, according to Teranet the time we listed Toronto had prices that were 4-5% higher than just 3 months prior (which is when some of our comps were from).