How many days before accepting an offer in NYC

[alyson]

On a separate note, is there a "respectable" amount of time to accept an offer by (# of days)? If we get a counter offer today that we are not 100% set with, I still would ideally like to have the open houses this weekend without accepting until then. Is that best practice? Or best practice to accept and then see what comes and we can pull out?

For context, currently listing my 1 bed lower Manhattan apartment via Hauseit's Agent Assisted FSBO service.

[HauseitAdmin]

Great question, there are no rules on how long you need to wait to accept an offer. You can wait weeks if you want, or accept immediately. Even if you accept immediately, it’s still common practice to keep showing and holding open houses until contracts are signed. That’s because offers aren’t binding, so why would you take yourself out of the market when you don’t have a sure deal?

So the short answer is yes, feel free to go accept an offer if it’s a good one, but tell them that you’re not going to cancel the open house, and may keep holding them until a contract is signed. And in the background, once you receive an offer you are free to shop it as much as possible and maybe even hold a best and final offer process!

[alyson]

Team,

First off thank you for your advice!

As you can see on the email chain, we’ve accepted a great offer! That said, we’d like to take your advice and keep showing it, just in case this falls through, but feel confident that 1 open house for this weekend will suffice. Let’s cancel the Saturday open house but keep the Sunday from 12-2.

Thanks so much!!

Aly