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If an agent uses phantom bids (i.e. tells the seller they have been outbid when they have not been in an effort to get them to increase their bid) then yes he is a cowboy agent.
The same principles apply to the stock market - it is illegal for a company to falsely inflate the price of their stock by announcing false profits, spread rumours of phantom mergers, insider trading etc. There are stringent regulations in place to prevent against, and punish, such behaviour.
However, the estate agent industry is not regulated in this manner which clears the way for cowboy agents to increase the value of their stock (i.e. the house they are trying to sell) by using false bids to persuade the buyer that the market holds the stock in higher esteem than it actually does.
I personally think that the whole estate agent should be heavily regulated and/or run by the state. I can see no value added to the process by estate agents - they show up to the house, take a few pictures, produce a brochure, let people into the house probably 3 times, take a fe phone calls and thats it, besides possibly spinning a few yarns to increase the price.
The whole process could benefit from being state run in that instead of the current agents' offices, we would have government owned offices. If you want to sell your house you pop along to one of these offices, the agent, who is on a government salary, not a commission, takes photos and creates brochures and puts the site details up on the website, which is the focus of this approach. The majority of buyers would love to have one single source of listings for houses for sale. Those that don't have access to the web can visit the office. I'm sure a system could be used whereby the agent validates the identity of those people making a bid and then publishes each bid under an anonymous number, known only to the system (kind of like BoI online pin code), which allows the buyers greater transparency - they can see exactly what bids have actually been placed.
There would be no artificial inflating of prices by cowboy agents, and sellers would not have to pay commission that ranges up to several thousand euro - this would benefit everyone across the board.
True, these are essentially private sales, but the sums and potential fraudulent activity, and tax evasion (which the new stamp duty cut-offs have caused to become more widespread) involved means that, in the same way they will finally open their eyes to tax evasion through the credit unions, the government should seriously consider regulating this industry.