After months of preparation, your home is finally on the market. Agents are calling to set up showings for their buyers. Your agent has scheduled a broker's open house for real estate agents. A public open house is planned for the weekend.

The day after your property hits the multiple listing, your agent calls to tell you that the first buyers who saw your home want to buy it. They have written an offer and their agent wants to present it to you as soon as possible. This good news may leave you feeling both excited and apprehensive.

Of course you wanted to sell in a reasonable time. But did you ask too little for your home? What if you miss out on thousands of dollars by selling too quickly to the first buyer who comes along? What should you do?

Your first inclination might be to tell your agent you don't want to hear any offers for a week or so. This would give other agents the opportunity to show your home to other potential buyers. Maybe you'll even get multiple offers if you delay for awhile.

This strategy might work if the buyers are willing to wait. It could also backfire on you if the buyers get annoyed and withdraw their offer.

FIRST-TIME TIP: Your timetable for offer presentations should be dictated by local custom and market conditions. When real estate is practiced against local custom, this can cause agents and their buyers to become suspicious. Negative feelings of any sort can be detrimental to a successful negotiation. You and your agent should establish a procedure for offer presentations that will be fair and equitable to all parties involved.

The most commonly-practiced custom is to listen to offers as they are written. Unless buyers and their agents are told that offers won't be heard until a certain date, the assumption will be made that the sellers will hear an offer as soon as possible.

In active real estate markets, especially if prices are rising rapidly, it may be in the seller's best interest to wait to hear offers until after the broker's open house. Or a specific date may be set to hear offers.

In some areas, offers aren't heard until after the first public open house. This procedure enables the sellers to get the highest price possible for their home. It's almost impossible to sell a home for less than market value if it's exposed to the market before it's sold. A home that's priced below market will often generate more than one offer. Multiple offers can result in a property selling for more than the asking price.

Of course, there's no guarantee that if you wait to hear offers, the offers will appear. The property must be in demand and it must be priced at or below market value to generate the excitement level that can result in multiple bids.

Also keep in mind that you do want your home to sell quickly. Generally, the longer it takes to sell a home, the lower the ultimate selling price.

If you do elect to wait a period of time before entertaining offers, make sure that your agent informs other agents that this is the plan. It's best to make your plan known when the property is first exposed to the agents--at the broker's open house. This allows agents to tell their buyers, before they write an offer, how offers will be handled. It minimizes the risk of buyers withdrawing offers because they're offended.