The short answer: if buyer’s agents submit through ShowingTime’s Offer Manager, you already get a text. For agents who just email the offer, tell alfred_ “text me when an email looks like an offer on 14 Oak Street.” Scope it to the address, because “offer” alone matches half your inbox. The text lands a few minutes after the email.
What Offer Manager already covers
If your MLS runs ShowingTime, Offer Manager is the native answer, and it’s a good one. It’s an add-on in which buyer’s agents “submit the offer via the MLS instead of emailing it,” and the offer “will be delivered to the Listing Agent and/or Co-Listing Agent via text, push and email depending on their preferences” (ShowingTime Offer Manager help). Offers are organized by listing, and you can update every buyer’s agent at once. If you have it, turn it on and write “please submit through the MLS” into your offer instructions.
Where it stops: it depends on the buyer’s agent pressing that button. Offer Manager’s own help page describes the alternative as “just emailing it directly,” and on a Saturday, from a phone, plenty of agents do exactly that. Those offers land in your Gmail or Outlook, and your phone’s mail app doesn’t know they matter. Outlook can notify you for “Favorite People Only” (Microsoft Support), but the agent writing the offer is usually someone you’ve never emailed. A Gmail filter on “offer” can label the email, but it can’t text you.
Why “offer” alone is noisy
Try a rule on the word by itself and see what it catches in a week:
- Lender and retail promotions with “special offer” in the subject.
- Agents asking whether your sellers would “consider an offer” below list.
- Counteroffers on the deals where you represent the buyer.
- Offers on your other listings, which you want, but not mixed into this one’s alerts.
A text for each of those trains you to ignore the texts, which defeats the point. Scope the rule to the listing.
The alfred_ way: a rule for this listing
At the desk, open chat in the alfred_ web app and type it, or text it to alfred_ the morning the listing goes live:
Text me when an email looks like an offer on 14 Oak Street, especially one with a purchase agreement attached. Agents might write it as 14 Oak St.
alfred_ reads the rule back to you as a sentence. It’s a content rule: alfred_ reads each new email and judges whether it’s an offer on that property, so it doesn’t need the exact phrase.
Two additions for offer weekends:
- A sender rule for the offer you’re expecting. When an agent tells you “we’re writing tonight,” add them: “also text me whenever jordan@yourbuyersagent.com emails.” A rule about the sender is the sure kind.
- A folder for the listing. A second rule, “move emails about 14 Oak Street into a folder called 14 Oak Street,” keeps every offer and every question about the house in one place on the desktop. alfred_ doesn’t group mail by address on its own; a folder per listing is the honest version.
When the text arrives mid-showing, you can do the first three things from the same thread:
- “What’s the price, financing and closing date in that offer?” alfred_ reads the email and its attachment and texts back what it found.
- “Reply: received, thank you. I’ll present to my sellers tonight and respond by noon tomorrow.” alfred_ texts you the email to check, and sends it only after you say yes.
- “Remind me at 6 to call my sellers about offers.” You get a text at 6.
When the house is under contract, text “delete the 14 Oak Street offer rule” and it’s gone. More examples are in What you can ask via text, and the texting side of alfred_ is on the SMS page.
Where each step happens
- Text, at the showing: the alert, a quick read of the terms, the acknowledgment to the buyer’s agent, the reminder.
- iPhone app, back in the car: open the offer email and the purchase agreement; attachments open in the app.
- Desktop, that evening: the listing folder has every offer together, so you can line them up and write your sellers the summary.
The honest caveat
A content rule is a judgment, not a keyword match. An offer emailed with the subject “Hi” and no address in the body may not read as an offer on 14 Oak Street, and the text arrives 2 to 5 minutes after the email, not instantly. Ask agents to put the address in the subject line, and before you tell your sellers you have all the offers, check the folder and your inbox yourself. The alert gets you to the offer faster; it isn’t the record of what came in.