estate agents bad practice?

I viewed a property and contacted the estate agents by phone and email to offer the asking price. They asked for proof of funds which I faxed to them and told them I could leave a 5% deposit and that I was a first time buyer with no chain
They then contacted me 3 days later to say that they had had a higher offer and did I want to top it.
Are they allowed to do this? Why did they advertise the house if they had no intention of accepting the price as advertised?

The asking price is not necessarily the highest price that the seller will sell for. I don't think that there is anything to stop the EA doing this especially if it is on the instructions of the seller (which you will not be privy to obviously).

I would just wait it out and see. I don't know anything about the property or its location, but it does seem unlikely to me in the current climate that 2 people would be bidding on a property and offering the asking price or above in what is considered to be a buyers market. I could be totally wrong about this - but it is strange that the day after you make your offer that suddenly there is another bidder, especially when there are loads of houses/apartments on the market at the moment. The property must either be very good value or is very special.

That is absolutely standard practice, how else are they going to get the best price for their client? The EA would be taking a huge risk if they made up the other bid because you could just decide to walk away and then they've lost a buyer. There is scope for doing things like that but in the present climate a buyer is harder to come buy.

(Pantone - it was 3 days later, these things do happen as there are still a few popular properties around and if it is a buyers market then there should be some buyers around)

Sounds like the classic phantom bidder. Very convenient given the current market conditions! Buyers are like gold dust.

Watch how quickly the phantom bidder disappears when you withdraw your bid. The EA will be back on to you within a few days to try and talk you back into buying the house. You'd then be in the position to negotiate a better price.

The Prime Time Investigates programme, which was aired on RTE in mid-December, highlighted unethical practices in the industry. The revelations included confidential customer data being passed from a mortgage broker to an estate agent and phantom bidders being used to hype up selling prices.

Click to expand...

[broken link removed]

andynui said:

Sounds like the classic phantom bidder. Very convenient given the current market conditions! Buyers are like gold dust.

Watch how quickly the phantom bidder disappears when you withdraw your bid. The EA will be back on to you within a few days to try and talk you back into buying the house. You'd then be in the position to negotiate a better price.

Click to expand...

Without knowing anything about the property, you can't possibly make any comments like that.

not neccessarily. Market seems to be picking up. I have had 3 viewings for my place this week. I had one viewing from sept - december.

Sal92 said:

not neccessarily. Market seems to be picking up. I have had 3 viewings for my place this week. I had one viewing from sept - december.

Click to expand...

Putting mine on the market in the coming weeks!

Is there a rule of thumb that say for every 5 viewers you might get expect bid???

I've never heard of that? Think if the price is right you'll get a bid, good luck with selling, from just general chit chat around things seem to be moving again.