Extreme(ly Smart) Home Selling: Reverse Offers

Many an American home seller is wondering, to paraphrase the '60s song, "where have all the buyers gone?" With no more tax credit, mortgage guidelines still strict and unemployment holding its steady grip on the economy, buyers who are ready, willing and able to make an offer to buy a home are more scarce than a Kardashian without a reality show.

At the beginning of the housing crisis, sellers turned to gimmicky tricks like YouTube love letters about their homes and burying St. Christopher's figurines upside down in the front yard to try to move their homes off the market. These days, though, sellers are getting smarter and more strategic, turning the transaction on its head to get buyers off the fence with a phenomenon called the reverse offer.