I've seen buyers use this strategy quite a few times lately... and sellers usually aren't interested, or fooled, or entertained.

Here's the scenario...

A house is listed for sale, priced at $250,000.

Three offers come in, each one higher than the last, as is typical in this market...

Then, the fourth offer comes in.

Offer #4 is an offer of $350,000.  Contingent on the property appraising at or above the contract price.

I'm exaggerating a bit to make my point here -- but not by much.

Basically, a buyer offers WAAAAAY above the asking price -- well beyond what anyone would think would be a reasonable offer for the property -- but makes their offer contingent on an appraisal.

I suppose the thought is that surely a seller would pick an offer of $350K instead of an offer of $255K, $260K or $265K, right!?

Maybe not.

I have had the chance to see several sellers respond to these absurdly, unrealistically high offers and again, sellers usually aren't interested, or fooled or entertained by such offers.

Almost every seller I know would happily take Offer #3 as described above before they'd even start to entertain Offer #4.

Clearly, buyers can attempt to negotiate however they'd wish to do so, but this particular strategy does not seem, to me, to be a winning strategy.