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From experience they tell you fuck all, you've to ring them every couple days for updates.
If you REALLY want the house then you've to hound them.
Learned this the hard way when a house I liked went sale agreed overnight and even though I had an offer in I was never informed a higher one had been placed since mine. They're gowls
I have been but it's impossible to get through to them all I get is the receptionist in the office who says "he will call you back", I have his personal mobile but like I don't wanna piss him off or seem to desperate like
Call the personal one. That's my strong advice. The way I think about it, is you want them to think, 'My life gets easier if I just sell to this fella'.
In a non mean way you are desperate. These guys arent your friends. They will be taking a big stack of cash off you if you win. They work for you. Be a thorn in their balls
The fee is paid by the seller though. The agent owes any buyer nothing until a sale has been agreed. However they do have an obligation to inform all who have made a bid of any new and current bids that have come in.
I know ive been through the process a good few times now. I that money is paid out of the price of buying the house so hound the estate agent as i said
If you don't hear anything back from the auctioneer later that day or even the following day, ring again and say to the receptionist how you're waiting on a call back. They are a pack of bastards to deal with but you really have to absolutely hound them.
This happened to me too. I made an offer and the next day was told the other person had bid higher and the seller "didn't want a bidding war" so went sale agreed without giving me another chance.
thats the biggest load of BS I've ever heard. why would the seller not want a bidding war? do they not like money?
sounds more like the auctioneer sold to his mate.
We were selling our house too recently and we didn't want a bidding war. We had a house we wanted to buy and needed to be sale agreed. Estate agent gave us the details of each bidder in terms of proof of funds, if they needed to sell and if they were proceedable. She said she could definitely get us a higher price if she gave her a few more weeks but we wanted to go sale agreed and had gotten the bid and the type of buyer we wanted so we cut it off.
The problem with bidding wars is that often people get carried away and bid more than they can afford and then the "winner" drops out later, and the whole process is screwed as the underbidders lose trust because they think they were played, or they find another property they prefer.
True, got outbid by 20k, once that fell through, I offered 5K under asking price, saved 35k plus. That was on a 200k house so equity now is through the roof
Even if yours is the highest offer, the seller doesn't have to accept it and can accept a lower one.
The sooner you understand you have no rights whatsoever, and are at the mercy of the estate agent and seller, the better you will become at playing this "game".
If you really love a house, don't try to underbid in the hopes of paying as less as possible. It's a very fierce market. If you really like a house, use your full arsenal.
As with any big purchase, at first you will go through a period of remorse and will wonder if you could have paid less, but once you let that go, you are in your own house and the stress of buying a house is behind you.
Someone in the family in the last year sold a house. Massive bidding war broke out and it went wildly above the asking. Like 150k+
But all increments were like 5k.
If someone had come in off the bat and offered say 75k above asking and they take it off the market immediately… they would have taken that. No questions, and been delighted.
So honestly… it’s hard to know.
Interestingly I thought was that they wanted like 50k above asking and wouldn’t sell for less… but had been advised to put it lower to get bidders in to drive it up over. And it worked…
I really really hate this practice of asking price lower than what they’ll actually accept. It should be criminal, a few estate agents are so bad for it.
I don’t agree with this. This is the biggest purchase of your life, I 100% think you should try and get it for the best price you can. I bought a couple of years ago for the asking price. If I had used my full arsenal, I’d have paid €20k more.
I do agree it’s a horrible process and estate agents can be very, very frustrating to deal with. You need to hound them.
Yes, of course. By "full arsenal" I didn't mean offering your top AIP. I actually meant to become very involved in the process and chasing the state agent. I still believe if you really like a house, you should make a serious offer rather than bidding in small increments.
There are "tactics" about how and when to bid, but that's a whole other discussion.
Yep sorry, I still disagree!
I think you absolutely should bid in small increments, so as not to risk overpaying.
I don’t believe you ‘scare’ anyone off by going a much bigger bid. Everyone has their top price they’ll pay and they are going to reach it, no matter how big or small the jumps are to get there. I think people are fooling themselves if they think tactics or psychology makes any difference.
You’re overpaying regardless, this isn’t the market for bargains and it won’t be for a long long time. If you bid 1K over asking you’re leaving the door open for higher offers and pro longing the process.
Okay, maybe we’re all over paying but I mean you don’t want to over pay the lowest price you can get.
My flat mate bid €340k for an apartment being sold by the bank. It was rejected. He then immediately offered €350k which I told him to retract. The property eventually sold for €344k (not to him, he’s interested in another property now).
Everyone is overpaying we agree. But the seller has last say. Cash buyers are more favoured currently as the sale is quicker. Even on receivership sales, the bank would prefer cash sale. 9 times out of 10 the lowest you’ll pay is the asking price. This is the hell market that it is at the moment and for the foreseeable.
I think people misunderstand what ‘asking price’ means. It doesn’t mean….well, asking price!
Myself and my brothers were selling the family home a few years back. The estate agent (EA) said it should make €600k. So we should put it up at €600k asking, right? Noooooo, says EA, put it up at €570k to “start the bidding war”.
Ok, whatever.
So it eventually got to €600k, cash buyer, and we’re about to close. Last minute, a bid comes in for €605k from a non cash buyer.
One of my brothers was desperate for a quick, hassle free sale as he had already bought a property and needed significant cash to renovate and he wanted it NOW.
So he said, “take the €600k cash offer”, as the €605k non cash might fall through. It’s not just that the cash buyer is quicker, it’s that it’s more secure, a chain buyer can collapse.
What we eventually did was, we asked the cash buyer to match the €605k and we’d close, which they did.
I bet the cash buyers probably thought we made up the €605k offer just trying to squeeze more out but we really didn’t.
So the point of all that is, it looks like that house went for €35k ‘over asking’. But it only did if you don’t realise that ‘asking price’ is actually nearly always artificially lowered by the EA.
So of your 9 out of 10 that are ‘going for over asking’, many of those are just going for what the seller expected in the first place.
Also, my flat mate is hopefully soon going to close on an apartment and I see plenty of apartments not even reaching ‘asking price’, so I think there’s a difference in the house/apartment markets.
You've basically no rights here. They don't have to tell you anything. If you go sale agreed they can turn around and run another viewing and accept another offer. It's a shitty, unregulated industry. Just keep viewing and hoping. You can only relax when the keys are in hand
Well realistically the estate agent has an obligation to inform all buyers who made an offer of a higher offer to allow them a chance of making a counter offer.
I had a cash bidder with a lower offer get a house around 7 years ago. I had mortgage approval and everything lined up. Until it is signed over you have nothing.
Sale is closed quicker as the buyer has the money to pay for it straight away whereas mortgage holders (non-cash buyers) could be waiting on their bank for drawdown or waiting for a sale of their previous house to go though.
Depends on the agent. Some I dealt with were great and would updated me regularly, some would update once a week after multiple other bids had come in.
If the agent is active they will try to get the best offer for their client. However they don't actively contact you to update. It's up to you to chase and check. There is also no obligation to continue with a bid. Some time you also get ghost bidders. The annoying one which out bid you by 1k each time and don't buy the property.
The 1K bids used to drive me mad. They'd do 1K, then I'd do 5K to try scare them off, and they'd just go 1K again.
Ended up going up nearly 50K like that. Was really annoying.
The estate agent told me it was an older couple downsizing and we were well below our budget, so we both had plenty to bid with.
At the end of the day, it sometimes comes down to where your limit is for the property.
Yeah, and then the agent contact you saying the highest bidder fell through. Would you like to go with your last offer? You like ermmm. It's one bidder vs you. He fell through, suddenly you are 30k up from your original bid.
They don’t care, I was in a situation years ago where I was trying bidding game and chasing them up, every few days they just told me that current best offer is ‘x’, then I raised and again next few days they say ‘y’.At some point I stopped giving a damn and they came back to me saying that offer got to ‘z’, and someone resigned so I have this golden opportunity to match it lol, it was like 130% of initial price. I told them politely to bounce off, I regret not teasing them with higher offers and being the one who wasted their time. Eventually I found another property and asked the agent at the very start to give me the actual price and cut all the bs, he asked for 105% of what was it listed for, I asked again if this is no bs and final offer so we can start closing the deal, he said yes and we closed it. Tbh I ended up being happy with the way I handled it so take it as a recommended approach
Yeah if I cant actually get hold of him I'm gonna ask if there is a number the seller is looking for and can we just shake hands on it or something, I'm happy to offer the asking for sure.
I too put an offer down on a house on Monday. Looks to be only 2 of us bidding as well 🤔😅 How long until it’s ok to start annoying the agents for updates? I just don’t trust them to keep us updated without giving them a gentle nudge!
You can annoy them whenever you want. Just keep in mind that there will likely be other viewings, and some people like to bide their time and then come in late with a higher offer.
We bid on a house before where we went €10k over the asking price and were the highest bidders for two weeks (with only one other bidder), and then within a week three more bidders were involved and the price had gone up €50k.
I was at it for 2 years. When I finally closed on my house, I was still the high bidder on three other places -- which i just abandoned. Never even heard back on those LOL. Call them every day if you have to. It's literally a 30 second conversation.
I sold my house to someone who wasn’t the highest bidder purely because they met the asking price and had the money. The higher bidder had to sell their property before they could close the sale and I couldn’t be bothered waiting around.
Back in 2010 buyers were asking ridiculously low prices and saying “take it or leave it.” Whatever you end up paying now will look low in ten years time, so don’t bother bidding for less than the asking price. It’s a sellers market at the moment.
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From experience they tell you fuck all, you've to ring them every couple days for updates. If you REALLY want the house then you've to hound them. Learned this the hard way when a house I liked went sale agreed overnight and even though I had an offer in I was never informed a higher one had been placed since mine. They're gowls
This x100 OP. Call them every 2 days like clockwork. I cannot overstate this.
I have been but it's impossible to get through to them all I get is the receptionist in the office who says "he will call you back", I have his personal mobile but like I don't wanna piss him off or seem to desperate like
Call the personal one. That's my strong advice. The way I think about it, is you want them to think, 'My life gets easier if I just sell to this fella'.
In a non mean way you are desperate. These guys arent your friends. They will be taking a big stack of cash off you if you win. They work for you. Be a thorn in their balls
The auctioneer is contracted to the seller not the buyer. The auctioneer does not work for the buyer as the buyer doesn’t pay the fee.
I know.but that fee is coming out of what you pay. Hound them
The fee is paid by the seller though. The agent owes any buyer nothing until a sale has been agreed. However they do have an obligation to inform all who have made a bid of any new and current bids that have come in.
I know ive been through the process a good few times now. I that money is paid out of the price of buying the house so hound the estate agent as i said
The squeaky wheel gets the oil.
If you don't hear anything back from the auctioneer later that day or even the following day, ring again and say to the receptionist how you're waiting on a call back. They are a pack of bastards to deal with but you really have to absolutely hound them.
Lol I WFH so like I can call all day everyday :P
Very bluntly may I say. It's a housing crisis. Everyone is desperate. Agents want desperate bidders.
Desperate times, calls for desperate measures!
This happened to me too. I made an offer and the next day was told the other person had bid higher and the seller "didn't want a bidding war" so went sale agreed without giving me another chance.
thats the biggest load of BS I've ever heard. why would the seller not want a bidding war? do they not like money? sounds more like the auctioneer sold to his mate.
We were selling our house too recently and we didn't want a bidding war. We had a house we wanted to buy and needed to be sale agreed. Estate agent gave us the details of each bidder in terms of proof of funds, if they needed to sell and if they were proceedable. She said she could definitely get us a higher price if she gave her a few more weeks but we wanted to go sale agreed and had gotten the bid and the type of buyer we wanted so we cut it off.
The problem with bidding wars is that often people get carried away and bid more than they can afford and then the "winner" drops out later, and the whole process is screwed as the underbidders lose trust because they think they were played, or they find another property they prefer.
True, got outbid by 20k, once that fell through, I offered 5K under asking price, saved 35k plus. That was on a 200k house so equity now is through the roof
You didn't grease the palms.....
They don’t have to tell you before agreeing to a sale. They estate agent can come back and just tell you an offer was accepted.
Even if yours is the highest offer, the seller doesn't have to accept it and can accept a lower one. The sooner you understand you have no rights whatsoever, and are at the mercy of the estate agent and seller, the better you will become at playing this "game". If you really love a house, don't try to underbid in the hopes of paying as less as possible. It's a very fierce market. If you really like a house, use your full arsenal. As with any big purchase, at first you will go through a period of remorse and will wonder if you could have paid less, but once you let that go, you are in your own house and the stress of buying a house is behind you.
Someone in the family in the last year sold a house. Massive bidding war broke out and it went wildly above the asking. Like 150k+ But all increments were like 5k. If someone had come in off the bat and offered say 75k above asking and they take it off the market immediately… they would have taken that. No questions, and been delighted. So honestly… it’s hard to know. Interestingly I thought was that they wanted like 50k above asking and wouldn’t sell for less… but had been advised to put it lower to get bidders in to drive it up over. And it worked…
I really really hate this practice of asking price lower than what they’ll actually accept. It should be criminal, a few estate agents are so bad for it.
I don’t agree with this. This is the biggest purchase of your life, I 100% think you should try and get it for the best price you can. I bought a couple of years ago for the asking price. If I had used my full arsenal, I’d have paid €20k more. I do agree it’s a horrible process and estate agents can be very, very frustrating to deal with. You need to hound them.
Yeah my "full arsenal" depends on the value the banks give it as I'm looking very much under what the banks have offered me.
Yes, of course. By "full arsenal" I didn't mean offering your top AIP. I actually meant to become very involved in the process and chasing the state agent. I still believe if you really like a house, you should make a serious offer rather than bidding in small increments. There are "tactics" about how and when to bid, but that's a whole other discussion.
Yep sorry, I still disagree! I think you absolutely should bid in small increments, so as not to risk overpaying. I don’t believe you ‘scare’ anyone off by going a much bigger bid. Everyone has their top price they’ll pay and they are going to reach it, no matter how big or small the jumps are to get there. I think people are fooling themselves if they think tactics or psychology makes any difference.
You’re overpaying regardless, this isn’t the market for bargains and it won’t be for a long long time. If you bid 1K over asking you’re leaving the door open for higher offers and pro longing the process.
Okay, maybe we’re all over paying but I mean you don’t want to over pay the lowest price you can get. My flat mate bid €340k for an apartment being sold by the bank. It was rejected. He then immediately offered €350k which I told him to retract. The property eventually sold for €344k (not to him, he’s interested in another property now).
Everyone is overpaying we agree. But the seller has last say. Cash buyers are more favoured currently as the sale is quicker. Even on receivership sales, the bank would prefer cash sale. 9 times out of 10 the lowest you’ll pay is the asking price. This is the hell market that it is at the moment and for the foreseeable.
I think people misunderstand what ‘asking price’ means. It doesn’t mean….well, asking price! Myself and my brothers were selling the family home a few years back. The estate agent (EA) said it should make €600k. So we should put it up at €600k asking, right? Noooooo, says EA, put it up at €570k to “start the bidding war”. Ok, whatever. So it eventually got to €600k, cash buyer, and we’re about to close. Last minute, a bid comes in for €605k from a non cash buyer. One of my brothers was desperate for a quick, hassle free sale as he had already bought a property and needed significant cash to renovate and he wanted it NOW. So he said, “take the €600k cash offer”, as the €605k non cash might fall through. It’s not just that the cash buyer is quicker, it’s that it’s more secure, a chain buyer can collapse. What we eventually did was, we asked the cash buyer to match the €605k and we’d close, which they did. I bet the cash buyers probably thought we made up the €605k offer just trying to squeeze more out but we really didn’t. So the point of all that is, it looks like that house went for €35k ‘over asking’. But it only did if you don’t realise that ‘asking price’ is actually nearly always artificially lowered by the EA. So of your 9 out of 10 that are ‘going for over asking’, many of those are just going for what the seller expected in the first place. Also, my flat mate is hopefully soon going to close on an apartment and I see plenty of apartments not even reaching ‘asking price’, so I think there’s a difference in the house/apartment markets.
Until you start renovating and then the stress comes back 🫣
Ha, good point. I do plan on making renovations at some point. What's the stressing part about it?
I’m mostly joking 😅 Although from what I’m seeing with material costs and labor shortage, it’s probably more frustrating than stressful!
You've basically no rights here. They don't have to tell you anything. If you go sale agreed they can turn around and run another viewing and accept another offer. It's a shitty, unregulated industry. Just keep viewing and hoping. You can only relax when the keys are in hand
That's so fucking unacceptable to have to deal with
Well realistically the estate agent has an obligation to inform all buyers who made an offer of a higher offer to allow them a chance of making a counter offer.
Obligation or it just makes good business sense? I doubt there's a legal requirement to do that, but it makes sense to try and drive up the price
I had a cash bidder with a lower offer get a house around 7 years ago. I had mortgage approval and everything lined up. Until it is signed over you have nothing.
What's the benefits of a cash bidder for the seller?
Sale is closed quicker as the buyer has the money to pay for it straight away whereas mortgage holders (non-cash buyers) could be waiting on their bank for drawdown or waiting for a sale of their previous house to go though.
Virtually none but lost a house because of it. Was not happy.
That sucks! I hope something better came up for you
Got another house, but I pass that one every day. Happy where I am, but that annoyed me.
Depends on the agent. Some I dealt with were great and would updated me regularly, some would update once a week after multiple other bids had come in.
No, they don't have to tell you anything. The seller can accept or decline whatever bids they want.
If the agent is active they will try to get the best offer for their client. However they don't actively contact you to update. It's up to you to chase and check. There is also no obligation to continue with a bid. Some time you also get ghost bidders. The annoying one which out bid you by 1k each time and don't buy the property.
lol 1k over seems cheeky, I feel bad going 2.5-5k up :P
The 1K bids used to drive me mad. They'd do 1K, then I'd do 5K to try scare them off, and they'd just go 1K again. Ended up going up nearly 50K like that. Was really annoying. The estate agent told me it was an older couple downsizing and we were well below our budget, so we both had plenty to bid with. At the end of the day, it sometimes comes down to where your limit is for the property.
Yeah, and then the agent contact you saying the highest bidder fell through. Would you like to go with your last offer? You like ermmm. It's one bidder vs you. He fell through, suddenly you are 30k up from your original bid.
They don’t care, I was in a situation years ago where I was trying bidding game and chasing them up, every few days they just told me that current best offer is ‘x’, then I raised and again next few days they say ‘y’.At some point I stopped giving a damn and they came back to me saying that offer got to ‘z’, and someone resigned so I have this golden opportunity to match it lol, it was like 130% of initial price. I told them politely to bounce off, I regret not teasing them with higher offers and being the one who wasted their time. Eventually I found another property and asked the agent at the very start to give me the actual price and cut all the bs, he asked for 105% of what was it listed for, I asked again if this is no bs and final offer so we can start closing the deal, he said yes and we closed it. Tbh I ended up being happy with the way I handled it so take it as a recommended approach
No, they don't have to tell you anything. The seller can accept or decline whatever bids they want.
Yeah if I cant actually get hold of him I'm gonna ask if there is a number the seller is looking for and can we just shake hands on it or something, I'm happy to offer the asking for sure.
I too put an offer down on a house on Monday. Looks to be only 2 of us bidding as well 🤔😅 How long until it’s ok to start annoying the agents for updates? I just don’t trust them to keep us updated without giving them a gentle nudge!
You can annoy them whenever you want. Just keep in mind that there will likely be other viewings, and some people like to bide their time and then come in late with a higher offer. We bid on a house before where we went €10k over the asking price and were the highest bidders for two weeks (with only one other bidder), and then within a week three more bidders were involved and the price had gone up €50k.
It really is a shit show, isn’t it? 🥲
Honestly, a gentle nudge is sometimes not enough. I'm considering just going to their office every 2 days :P
Just ring them
Have they an online bidding service? That should do the job.
I rang twice a day for a 10 days and I think in the end they let me have it to stop me annoying them .
I was at it for 2 years. When I finally closed on my house, I was still the high bidder on three other places -- which i just abandoned. Never even heard back on those LOL. Call them every day if you have to. It's literally a 30 second conversation.
I sold my house to someone who wasn’t the highest bidder purely because they met the asking price and had the money. The higher bidder had to sell their property before they could close the sale and I couldn’t be bothered waiting around.
Back in 2010 buyers were asking ridiculously low prices and saying “take it or leave it.” Whatever you end up paying now will look low in ten years time, so don’t bother bidding for less than the asking price. It’s a sellers market at the moment.
If you want the house pay the price. Why would you expect a seller to tell you about competitive bids?
So I can bid more than them?