What Is a Bully Offer and Should You Make One?

A bully offer, or pre-emptive offer, is one sent before a seller's advertised offer date, usually with a very short deadline. Under Ontario rules in force since December 1, 2023 a seller can refuse to see it, and if they do look, their agent must notify everyone who showed interest in the property.

A bully offer is an ordinary agreement of purchase and sale delivered at a time the seller did not ask for it. Nothing about the paperwork is special. The timing and the deadline attached to it are what make it a bully offer.

How one gets handled in Ontario is not left to the people involved. The rules are set by the Real Estate Council of Ontario, which regulates every registered agent and brokerage in the province, and they have been in force since December 1, 2023.

What is a bully offer?

RECO calls it a pre-emptive offer, and defines it as an offer where a buyer "does not comply with the process outlined by the seller to delay the presentation of offers or other process conditions". In practice that means the listing says offers will be reviewed on Tuesday evening, and you send yours on Saturday morning with a deadline of Saturday night.

The strategy it is aimed at is the delayed offer presentation, where a seller decides in advance to look at nothing until a set date. RECO's guidance to agents says that in an active market a delayed offer approach may prompt some buyers to submit pre-emptive offers, and that those offers often expire before the offer date arrives.

Why is the deadline always so short?

Because the deadline is the entire mechanism. RECO's bulletin says pre-emptive offers "often include a particularly short irrevocable period in an effort to avoid, or pre-empt, the seller's offer process and having to compete with other buyers".

The irrevocable period is the window in which the seller can accept and you cannot withdraw. Give the seller three days and their agent has time to phone everyone who walked through the house. Give them until nine tonight and the seller has to choose between one certain offer now and an uncertain crowd on Tuesday.

Does the seller have to look at it?

No, and this is the part most buyers do not know. A seller's agent must convey an offer to the seller as soon as possible after receiving it. RECO says the only exception is a clear and detailed written direction from the seller telling the agent to do otherwise.

That written direction is signed when the house is listed, long before your offer exists, and it decides what happens to it. A seller can direct that they do not want to be made aware of or review any pre-emptive offers under any circumstances, and in that case yours never reaches them. A seller can also set a threshold. RECO's own worked example is a seller who will only review pre-emptive offers above $600,000: an offer at $595,000 is not brought to them, and an offer at $605,000 is.

So a bully offer that goes nowhere has not necessarily been turned down. It may never have been seen.

What has to happen if the seller does look at it?

Everyone who showed interest has to be told. If the seller decides to consider a pre-emptive offer, RECO requires the seller's agent to notify, in writing, anyone who has expressed an interest in the property of the change to the offer presentation date and time.

RECO defines an interested party as anyone who has booked an upcoming appointment, viewed the property at a showing or an open house, told the brokerage or the agent that they will be submitting an offer, or already submitted one. Text message and email both count as written notice.

This is the trap in the strategy. A bully offer rarely buys you a quiet private negotiation. More often it starts the competing offer situation early, on a clock you set yourself, against buyers who have just been told to hurry.

RECO is also blunt about the shortcut some listings take. A line in the listing notes saying the seller reserves the right to view pre-emptive offers without notice does not satisfy the obligation to notify interested parties, and RECO says it "could be considered misleading".

One more thing worth knowing: if the bully offer is coming from the listing agent's own buyer client, that agent has to tell other interested parties as soon as possible, and the multiple representation has to be disclosed to every prospective buyer.

Will you find out what the other offers say?

You will learn how many there are. You will probably not learn what is in them.

In Ontario the seller's agent is required to disclose the number of competing offers to every buyer who has submitted a written offer. The content is a different question. Sellers choose how much to share, they are not required to share anything, and agents working for a seller are not permitted to share any of the content of the offers unless the seller directs them to in writing. Personal or identifying information can never be shared at all.

The seller can also change that decision at any point, including after your offer is in. You may not know in advance, and you may not know which parts will be shared.

So should you make one?

A bully offer does exactly one thing: it forces a decision earlier than the seller planned. It is worth what it costs only when the seller has a reason to take a sure thing today over an unknown result next week, and when your offer is strong enough to be that sure thing.

The price of getting there is usually paid in two places. The first is the number, because an offer that is only slightly better than what the seller expects on offer night gives them no reason to cut the process short. The second is conditions, and this is where the real money is lost. RECO's guidance to buyers is direct on both: pre-qualifying for a mortgage "does not safely eliminate the need for a financing condition in an offer", and forgoing a home inspection "is a significant risk that a buyer needs to carefully consider".

You also spend money before you know the answer. A condo bully offer means paying for and reading the status certificate on a weekend deadline. A freehold one usually means a pre-offer inspection. If the seller has directed their agent not to look, that spending buys you nothing.

The honest version is that a bully offer is a tool for a specific situation, not a general tactic for winning houses. It works best where a seller is motivated by certainty rather than price, where the property has been sitting long enough that the offer date is starting to look optimistic, and where you can write terms clean enough that there is nothing left to negotiate. Everywhere else it tends to be an expensive way to announce that you want the house.

Before you write one, work out the number you would still be comfortable with on Wednesday morning, not the number that wins on Saturday night. Our affordability calculator uses the same debt service ratios and stress test a lender will, which is the figure that matters when the offer is firm and there is no condition left to protect you. If you want a second read on whether a bully offer makes sense on a particular listing, we can look at it with you.

Rules cited are current as of August 31, 2026. This is general information about how the process works in Ontario, not legal advice on a specific transaction.