Value in Stale Listings?

[Ben Fichter]

We're all aware of how frothy a lot of RE markets are right now, and how competitive buying can be (offers way over asking, dropping contingencies, etc). But even in this environment, most markets will have listings that have sat for weeks or months or longer. Sometimes it's totally obvious why a property has sat on the market, but sometimes there seems to be opportunity in some of these stale listings.

Has anyone had success targeting stale listings? Possibly using the time on market as leverage when making your offer? Or is it best to avoid sifting through listings that have presumably been passed over for good reason? I'm looking at MFHs in a fairly competitive market and am seeing a few interesting listings from the early fall/summer and am wondering if I should dig deeper on them or just focus on reacting quickly to newer listings.