Advice on house bid

M

Meredith

Registered User
Messages
1
hi there,
My husband and I are looking to trade up, have just received mortgage approval in principal, currently living in 4- bed semi and have found a house we really like in area we want to live. We need to sell our house to buy the new house.
The asking price is pretty much what we can afford (we could stretch to an extra 5k above asking), estate agent has advised three other parties bidding. EA advised we would have no problems selling our own house ( he has sold multiple properties where we currently live)and that if we were interested in bidding on the property, he would vouch on our behalf to the vendor with respect to our capacity to sell our home quickly. At that point, the highest bid on the house was 10k below asking and the bidder apparently has no property to sell to secure sale of the house.
We have started bidding on the house- EA of course suggested we bid asking price given we have a property to sell and the other party do not! We chose to ignore this & went 2k above current bid. EA said he has spoken to the vendor and he 'would be happy to deal with us if we were the successful highest bidders'.
I have started to wonder if the EA is encouraging us purely to inflate the selling price. In other words, even if we outbid the other interested party by a few thousand, is the vendor more likely to accept an offer from them given they are not reliant on selling a property, even if they are the under bidder? I have been reluctant to put this to the EA as my experience has taught me the less they know the better, but would appreciate advice from other buyers who have been in similar situations!
 
They now know what your going to get for the current property thus he/she knows what you can go to price wise (or has an idea)

Say you want a new kitchen or new car etc etc hence why you are holding some money back.
 
The EA is working on the behalf of the vender not you, his job is to get the best price he can for the vendor, if you make a bid he will contact the 3 other parties to see if they would like to place a higher bid and if they do he will then contact you to see if you would like to up your bid, this is how he gets the best price for his client.
He will do the same for you if you are selling your property through him.
My advise, which you are probably doing, is to set a maximum price you are willing to pay, offer a little above the current high bid and if it goes above your max, walk away and don't look back.
 
This is very complicated and it's a good practice not to trust estate agents.

But if the estate agent has three bidders on this property, I can't see why they would bother with you? They don't need you to inflate the price if they have three bidders. No matter how sellable your house is, the seller of the other house will sell to someone who is not in a chain.

So it would seem to me that the estate agent is trying to get the sale of your house from you.

I suggest that you put your house on the market through another agent. It's only when you go sale agreed at the price you want, will you be able to bid seriously for the other house. And even then, until contracts are exchanged, you won't be able to exchange contracts with the seller of the house you want to buy.

Brendan
 
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