Real estate comes with A LOT of forms (seriously, so many forms ), and one you may hear us talk about when listing your home is Form 244 – Seller’s Direction.
Despite the official-sounding name, it’s actually pretty simple.
A Form 244 is basically a way for you, as the seller, to put specific instructions in writing about how you want certain parts of your listing and the offer process handled.
And while you’ll often hear about a Form 244 when we’re holding offers, that’s definitely not the only reason we use one.
Holding Offers & Offer Presentation Dates
One of the more familiar uses of a Form 244 is when we set a specific date and time to review offers. Instead of looking at offers as soon as your home hits the market, we may decide together to give buyers a few days to see the property before reviewing any offers that come in.
This is also where the infamous “bully offer” can come into play.
A bully offer (or pre-emptive offer, if we’re being technical) is simply an offer that comes in before the scheduled offer date. As the seller, you can provide direction about whether you’re willing to consider one or whether you’d prefer to stick with the original plan.
Sometimes, We Just Need More Time!
Another way we regularly use a Form 244 is to make sure our sellers have enough time to properly review and consider an offer.
For example, we may have sellers who are travelling, working shift work, or simply have schedules that make it difficult for everyone to sit down together on short notice.
In those situations, we can use a Seller’s Direction to request that offers include a minimum irrevocable period — perhaps 24 or 48 hours.
And what exactly is an irrevocable? (There’s another real estate term for you! 😂)
It simply means the amount of time the buyer is giving the seller to respond to their offer before it expires.
Having that extra time can be incredibly helpful. Rather than feeling rushed into making a pretty major decision, it gives us time to connect with everyone, sit down together, go through the offer properly, ask questions, discuss the pros and cons, and decide how you’d like to respond.
It Can Also Be Part of Our Listing Strategy
There are also times when we may recommend a minimum irrevocable as part of the overall strategy for your sale.
Maybe we’ve just listed your home and we’re expecting a lot of interest, but we don’t want to formally hold offers until a specific date.
If an offer comes in during those first few days, having a little more time before it expires allows us to continue communicating with agents who have shown the property or have upcoming showings. If there are other interested buyers, they then have an opportunity to decide whether they would also like to submit an offer.
This can be particularly helpful with a special property or a home we expect will attract a lot of attention. Sometimes the goal is simply to make sure we’ve had enough time to properly expose the home to the market before you have to make a decision.
It doesn’t mean we’re always trying to create multiple offers – sometimes we genuinely just need more time! It’s about choosing a strategy that makes sense for that particular home and those particular sellers.
So, Do You Need a Form 244?
Maybe! And that’s exactly why we have the conversation.
Every home, every seller, and every market is different. Sometimes holding offers makes a ton of sense. Sometimes requesting a longer irrevocable makes sense. Other times, neither strategy is necessary.
That’s where having a plan before we hit that big LIST button comes in.
We’ll talk about what’s happening in the current market, what similar homes are doing, the kind of activity we expect, and, most importantly, what works best for you and your situation.
At the end of the day, Form 244 is really about one thing: giving us clear written direction from you, the seller, about how you want certain parts of your sale handled.
We promise you’re not the first person to wonder what all these real estate forms actually mean—or why there seem to be so many of them. 😉
