This paper investigates waitlist mechanisms for public housing allocation, introducing the pay-per-offer mechanism as a novel alternative to the deferral-based approach. Through a Markov decision process, dynamically arriving items are allocated to waiting agents with heterogeneous values for different items and diverse outside options. Key contributions include analysis of optimal strategies for agents in these mechanisms, evaluation of how evaluation metrics vary based on the distribution of outside options and waitlist parameters. We provide valuable insights into the design and impact of various waitlist mechanisms.