03/10/2026
You might think the most important moment in a listing’s life is the closing. It isn’t.
It’s the first few days after it hits the market.
That’s when demand is highest—when buyers who haven’t yet found what they’re looking for come out at warp speed to see the new listing.
These buyers have seen a lot of property. They know what they want and what they typically get—and don’t get—for the money.
So when they tour a new listing, their fingers are already on the offer trigger.
Then their perfect home comes to market and—kapow!—the buyer who had been hoping to throw in lowballs at mundane properties is suddenly chomping at the bit to submit a ridiculous over-ask.
Today, however, at least one big brokerage wants to restrict a portion of its new sales inventory from coming to the market at large at the get-go.
How might inhibiting a listing from reaching the widest possible audience impact its final sales price? My experience tells me: maybe significantly.
Back in the day, I wrote a weekly column for Curbed Boston, a popular real-estate blog. At the time, the Hub was overflowing with over-ask offers, and I had heard of a Cambridge single-family that sold a million pre-inflation dollars over the ask. So I contacted the listing agent and asked how many total offers he had received.
Surprisingly, he answered: “Two.”
So you can see—all you need are two exceptionally qualified buyers to blast an offer into the stratosphere faster than liquid hydrogen.
I know when I talk of yesteryear it sounds like I’m saying I used to walk four miles through the snow to get to the log-cabin elementary school I attended. But check out the following, more recent million-dollar over-asks.
In the last ten years, MLS—the most widely distributed listings platform in the Hub—reveals the details of nine more Cambridge single-families that sold at least one million buckaroos over asking. One even sold for $2 million over ask.
Those sales had two key qualities.
One, they found buyers immediately, when the listings were new to the market.
And two, no buyer’s agent was responsible for more than one million-over-ask sale.
I’m not privy to the offer situations behind all these seven-figure premiums paid. But consider this: what if there was even one situation with only two competing buyers—and instead of marketing the property at large, the listing company had restricted the marketing in such a way that the second buyer and buyer’s agent didn’t even know the property was available for sale?
How much might that have cost the home seller?
You don’t need a million-dollar over-ask offer for this policy to affect your home sale. Any program that lowers exposure and demand can reduce buyers, showings—and the final sale price.
