How Long Does a Real Estate Agent Have to Present an Offer?

How quickly listing agents must present written offers to sellers, what the rules actually say, and what to do when yours is ignored.

You sent a written offer on Monday. It is Thursday. Nothing. Here is the short answer: in most places there is no fixed deadline, no twenty four hour rule you can point at. What governs the timing is a general expectation that written offers reach the seller promptly, and that comes from state license law and, for agents who are Realtors, from the Realtor Code of Ethics. Below is what that means in practice, why offers stall, and how to escalate when you have real reason to think yours never reached the seller.

There is usually no fixed clock

What you find in the rules is language like "promptly" or "as soon as practicable." An agent is expected to get a written offer in front of their seller without unreasonable delay. What counts as unreasonable is a judgment call, and it depends on the situation and on where you are.

A few things shape the timing:

• State license law sets the duty. Every state licenses agents and imposes duties to the client, and communicating material information is normally part of that. The exact wording differs by state.
• The Realtor Code of Ethics applies to members. Agents who are Realtors, meaning members of the National Association of Realtors, are directed to submit offers and counteroffers objectively and as quickly as possible. Not every licensed agent is a Realtor, so this does not cover everyone.
• The seller can give written instructions. A seller can tell their agent in writing how they want offers handled, including after a property is already under contract. That can change what the agent does with yours.
• Local board and brokerage policy adds another layer on top.

Rules vary by state and by local board, so treat all of this as the general shape rather than a guarantee. Know your local rules. If timing on a specific deal matters to you, ask a local attorney or your state real estate commission rather than relying on a blog post.

For the broader duty behind all of this, I wrote a full breakdown of whether Realtors are required to present all offers.

What people expect versus what the rule usually is

That last row is the one that trips people up. The listing agent works for the seller. Getting your offer in front of that seller is part of the job. Keeping you personally updated is courtesy, not duty. If you want a response, you have to ask for one.

Why your offer stalls even when nobody is acting in bad faith

Most stalled offers are not conspiracies. They are ordinary friction:

• What you sent is not actually an offer. A text asking "would they take 190?" has no clock on it because there is nothing to present. This is the single most common reason people think they are being ignored, and it is the whole subject of do listing agents have to present every offer.
• The offer is incomplete. Missing signature, missing proof of funds, blank closing date. The agent parks it until they can get the missing piece, and then the week gets away from them.
• The seller is hard to reach. Traveling, out of state, in a hospital, three heirs who have to agree. The agent cannot present faster than the seller will pick up.
• The property is already under contract. The seller may have instructed the agent about how to handle further offers, or the agent may be waiting on the first buyer's inspection deadline before bringing anything else.
• Volume. On an aged listing with a dozen lowball emails a month, yours can look like the eleventh one unless it is clearly different.

I went deeper on the friction side in why listing agents ignore your offers. The short version is that most of the delay is created before you hit send.

Put your own clock in the offer

You cannot set the agent's deadline. You can set yours.

Every state approved contract has a place for an offer expiration or acceptance deadline. Fill it in. A written offer that expires Friday at 5pm gives the agent a concrete reason to move it today, and it gives the seller a reason to answer rather than shop it around.

Keep the deadline reasonable. Two or three business days is usually enough time for a seller to see the offer and think. Four hours reads as a pressure tactic and gets you dismissed. And be ready to actually let it expire, because a deadline you never enforce teaches the other side that your deadlines mean nothing.

The other half of the problem is that you are guessing. You do not know whether the agent opened your email or whether it went to spam. Knowing that one fact changes what you do next: if it was never opened, the fix is delivery, not persuasion.

A follow up sequence that works

This is my working cadence, not a legal requirement. It keeps you in front of the agent without making you the buyer nobody wants to answer.

1. Same day you send: confirm delivery. One line, asking them to confirm receipt and that the offer will be presented to the seller.
2. Next business day: if there is no reply, call. Email is easy to ignore, a short polite call usually is not.
3. Two or three business days in: ask directly and in writing. "Has this been presented to the seller?" Putting the question in writing changes the tone without being rude.
4. Around a week: ask for a written response, either an acceptance, a counter, or a rejection signed by the seller. Sellers are not obligated to respond to your offer at all, but asking makes the file clear.
5. Watch the listing. A price cut is your reason to send a fresh offer rather than keep pushing the stale one.
6. If you still get nothing and you believe the offer was never shown to the seller, you can contact the managing broker at that brokerage. That is a normal step, not an escalation, and brokers generally want to know.

Beyond the broker, your state real estate commission and the local board handle complaints. That path exists, but I would treat it as a last resort on a deal that actually matters. Reputation travels fast in a small market and you will be sending offers to these same people next month.

Make the offer impossible to sit on

The fastest offers are the ones that take no work to present. A signed state approved contract with your price, closing timeline, inspection period, and earnest money filled in, plus proof of funds attached, can be walked to the seller in seconds. An incomplete one becomes a task, and tasks slide.

If you have never sent one directly, start with how to submit an offer without a realtor or the longer walkthrough on sending offers on MLS listings without an agent. If you are not sure what "presented" even involves on the seller's end, here is what presenting an offer actually means.

This is also why I built SendMLS. It fills the state approved contract from the address and sends it from your own Gmail, so a complete offer takes about a minute. The speed is not the point by itself. The point is that a complete offer removes the agent's best reason to leave yours for later.

The takeaway

There is usually no fixed number of hours. The expectation is prompt presentation of written offers, the specifics vary by state, and a seller's written instructions can change the picture.

So stop waiting on a clock that may not exist. Send a complete signed offer, put your own expiration on it, confirm receipt, follow up on a schedule, and go to the managing broker if you have real reason to think it never reached the seller. That is the part you control, and it is usually enough.