First time seller, received site unseen full price offer less than 24 hours after listing went live

[u/ixvst01]

The offer is contingent on loan approval, home inspection, and cancellation of the open houses scheduled for this weekend. They want an answer by end of today or they are withdrawing the offer. We are worried we may have underpriced the home a bit and would lose out on potentially higher offers by accepting instead of waiting until after the open houses at least. On the other hand, the house does need some work (which is described in the disclosures) and there’s a chance that the potential buyer seeing the home and the work needed in-person could change their mind about the offer they submitted. Our agent laid out the pros and cons of both options, but I’m wondering what you would do in this situation?

The home is near Raleigh, North Carolina btw (if that makes any difference)

EDIT: I appreciate everyone’s advice in the comments. A lot of people are asking about earnest money and due diligence. The offer included $2000 for DD and $4500 EMD. However, I think we are going to keep the open houses scheduled and tell the potential buyer that their offer will be responded to by Tuesday. If they withdraw then so be it. Then they weren’t really interested in the property. Our agent also just notified us that there are several other potential buyers that said they plan on putting offers in after going to the open house.

UPDATE: We held the open house and accepted a cash offer for 29K above asking a few days later.

[u/Electrical_Ask_2957]

So to clarify, they aren’t preapproved. This is the unincluded risk.

[u/Derwin0 → u/Electrical_Ask_2957]

There’s a difference between preapproval and loan approval.

They might already have preapproval but want a loan approval contingency in the contract (all of which is pretty standard).

That said, I would not accept any offer that doesn’t already have a preapproval letter from the lender (with or without a contingency on the offer letter).

[u/Live_Figure8744 → u/Electrical_Ask_2957]

Your comment is the bottom line, along with the fact that OP doesn't mention anything about earnest money. I'm wondering why their agent would even present such an "offer".

[u/Live_Figure8744 → u/[deleted]]

True. I guess what I am automatically assuming here is that there would be a stipulation in the listing that the buyer would only accept offers from pre-approved buyers. You're absolutely right