Estate agent not notifying me of every bid...

no harm in asking her eh? "i'm new to this, so maybe you could help me understand the process" kind of attitude..
 
jan said:
no harm in asking her eh? "i'm new to this, so maybe you could help me understand the process" kind of attitude..
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What's the point when the key issue here is presumably securing the property with a winning bid within the bidder's budget or bailing out of the bidding process if not?
 
It's very simple decide what you think is a fair price to pay for the house, tell them it's all you're prepared to pay and that you're ready to sign documents at that price.

None of this faffin about with bids just going with your top offer.
 
Slightly off topic, I was bidding on an apt in Killester circa 2005ish, I countered on a bid by 2k, the E/a called me back and in a disappointed tone told me he thought I'd bid more (increments of 5k) as he reckoned I was a " player"

That gave me a good laugh
 
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jan said:
no harm in asking her eh? "i'm new to this, so maybe you could help me understand the process" kind of attitude.
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But what do you hope to acheive by this?

You say your desire is to ensure that you are "treated fairly". But this is not what the EA wants; she wants to get the highest bid that you are willing to make, and she wants the same in relation to every other bidder.

Earlier in this thread you suggested that you should have been told about the 455k bid first so that you could bid 460k, so that you would now be the highest bidder. You point out that if 460k was the max for both you and X, you would then get the house for 460k, since X would not put in another bid.

But you, in fact, are willing to bid more. We know this because you have said that you intend to continue to bid. So in truth the EA's strategy has worked well; she will now get a bid in excess of 460k from you, and the house will sell for more than 460k. Selling the house to you for 460k would obviously have been advantageous to you, but it would not have been advantageous to the EA's client; the person whose interests she is required to prioritise and to advance. There is no appeal you can make to any concept of "fairness" that will persuade her that she should have adopted a course of action that might have resulted in the house selling for less that it will now sell for.

Nor, I think, is their any concept of "fairness" that dictates that you should have been told about bids before X was told about them. The EA genuinely does not care who buys the house; the practice of going first to the underbidder is not dictated by any sense that the underbidder has a right of first refusal, but by the pragmatic consideration that the underbidder is the one most likely to overbid the current highest bid. It's a practice that can be overridden by the most trivial and arbitrary of reasons — e.g. a timely enquiry from another bidder or potential bidder. The EA could toss a coin to decide which underbidder to go back to first, and I don't think anyone could maintain that that was "unfair", because no bidder has a right to be prioritised over any other bidder.

As others have said, I think you are allowing yourself to be distracted here. All that matters is how much you are willing to pay for this house, and how much others are. If you start engaging with the EA about best practice and fairness and will she undertake to call you first? you mark yourself out as someone who is not focussed first and foremost on buying the property, and then she is even less likely to have you at the top of her list for calls back.
 
So firstly, the EA should have contacted you, no getting past that.

Secondly, when you did bid, did you say this was as high as you could go?. Also are you a cash buyer or in a chain?.

This could be a simple issue around timing. Someone had to be rang first and it wasn't you.

As for "reporting" the EA. you're wasting your time, you have no contractual relationship with the EA and it will come down to a "he said/She said" discussion that won't take you anywhere other then get you a bad reputation with that EA and other EA's in the area.
 
While sellers are looking for the best price there are other factors.

We were also interested in whether the bidders had a chain, cash etc and how soon they wanted complete. We told the EA working for us all that.

We paid her a lot of money. She worked for us. I didn’t want to waste time accepting bids from someone who had a place to sell and still needed mortgage approval etc. And I trusted her to get that right. She didn’t but lesson learned and it all worked out in the end. I didn’t see her as having responsibility to mind the bidders except wrt getting us the best deal.
 
Peanuts20 said:
So firstly, the EA should have contacted you, no getting past that.
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They told her within ~24 hours, that's not unreasonable. Fair enough bidding can be a high stress experience for the novice bidder, but they shouldn't expect hourly updates.
 
Sarah Ryan said:
It's very simple decide what you think is a fair price to pay for the house, tell them it's all you're prepared to pay and that you're ready to sign documents at that price.

None of this faffin about with bids just going with your top offer.
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I don't understand this approach.

The OP may be prepared to pay €500k.

But if the most anyone else is prepared to pay is €460, then she should bid only €465k

And no estate agent expects it to be your final bid, so if you go in with €500k, they will come back looking for €510k.


Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I don't understand this approach.
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Worked for me.
Might not work for everybody, I work in a fast paced environment, I have no time for messing about, we are either doing business or not.

I stated what I was prepared to pay, and that there would strictly be no other offers above regardless what happened, the EA is working for the vendor yes but you can always set your own boundaries of what you will and won't accept. I was selling and buying at the same time so for my own sanity I had to set boundaries because these situations mentally can get out of control.

I made sure it was a healthy offer, it was a big risk but it was my dream home and location so it's the best money I have ever spent (borrowed)
 
Sarah Ryan said:
Worked for me
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You don't actually know this though. Most people want to purchase at the lowest possible price. Fair enough if you didn't but that's very unusual. You may have bought the house for less than what you ultimately did if you didn't highball an offer.
 
24601 said:
You may have bought the house for less than what you ultimately did if you didn't highball an offer.
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Perhaps.

But I bought it at the price I was prepared to pay to get what I wanted. I have no regrets.
It's my 3rd and final house, I have ticked all the boxes now.
 
24601 said:
ou don't actually know this though. Most people want to purchase at the lowest possible price. Fair enough if you didn't but that's very unusual. You may have bought the house for less than what you ultimately did if you didn't highball an offer.
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There's no one best route here, you're trying to second guess psychological and financial factors of people you've never met. Sometimes a big increment is enough to scare other bidders off who might get carried away with smaller increments. For many, the benefit of closing on a dream house far outweighs a few grand.
 
Sarah Ryan said:
But I bought it at the price I was prepared to pay to get what I wanted. I have no regrets.
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As you say, it worked for you.

It may have cost you €50k more than it needed, but if it was the house you wanted, then maybe that was worth it.

I know of a case recently where the house was towards the end of the bidding at around €800k and someone really wanted the house having traded down from a €2m house and offered €1m on the grounds that it would be accepted there and then "no faffin about " .
 
Brendan Burgess said:
It may have cost you €50k more than it needed, but if it was the house you wanted, then maybe that was worth it.
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No not that much, there were bids up to €307k, I went in with first and final offer of €325k and the vendor agreed. The EA knew I was sale agreed and I had declared all my figures to him.
I would say get on the right side of the EA and be sharp and that makes their life easier.

I also sold my apt the exact same way, it went on sale with asking price of €165k, I said 175k was the sale price to the EA, it was all I needed to make my plan work. And 175k is what is on the PPR.

Might not be a very orthodox way to do business but hey!
 

I have seen this a lot in recent years. Typically someone (generally a widow!) selling a large house in, say Foxrock/Carrickmines for several million and paying way over the market prices for detached bungalows in nearby estates in Cabinteely.
 
We had nonsense with ours years back. Bidding was going to and fro. Eventually went up by 10k and maybe we overpaid but the price we paid we were happy with. This faffing around is ridiculous. If your deposit isn't changing and it's mortgage amount in the grand scheme over 30 years as it was for us isn't a big deal.
 
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