Getting ready

We (well mostly Jason) have been making a lot of phone calls lately to get ready to sell our condo. We are planning to list with Sask Houses next Thursday (July 5th) already! We have been working on taking our pictures for our listing and have all the info typed out and ready to be entered into Sask Houses form. We have thought out when we would like to have our open houses and they will likely be July 7, 8 and 11.

We have debated a little bit about how to take our offers....whether we should do a sealed envelope offer system, or if we should look at them and if someone asks what the highest bid is, so they can beat it, tell them. I want to do this in a way that is fully ethical, obviously if someone asks for our highest offer we wouldn't give them false information, but I think having a sealed envelope system would keep everyone on even ground who puts in an offer. I am not sure which way would give us our best chance of making the most money. I would think that if people are taking a shot in the dark trying to be our highest bid they may try to bid higher than if they knew the highest bid and only bid a hundred or a so more than the current highest.

We also weren't totally sure what is a good deposit amount to ask for with an offer. Anyone have any suggestions? I saw something that said anywhere from $2,000-$10,000 is a fair amount. Any thoughts? I imagine we could talk to our lawyer about that because she was very knowledgeable and was able to give us lots of good information already.