Solving the Issue of Phantom bids

D

DerKaiser

Registered User
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Just getting the ball rolling on this as practically every other thread descends into an arguement over whether counterparty house bids exist or have simply been invented by the EA.

Quick suggestion, feel free to add to it or knock it. Surely every bid should be logged and made publicly available, on websites like myhome.ie of Daft perhaps.

The details posted could be the name of the solicitor acting on behalf of the purchaser together with their bid. Simple enough.

This could be made a legal requirement maybe? With the levels of distrust around at the moment it is surely an initiative that would be in everyones best interests.

Any ideas on this?
 
Great idea - would it not involve a lot of administration work thereby pushing up either EA fee's or solicitor fees?
 
unless you are bidding before you've engaged the services of a solicitor (which I would have thought would be quite a common practice)
 
I work in life insurance and there's a hell of a lot of admin going on due to regulatory requirements and compliance, usually relating to issues most people are not concerned about. A small bit of useful regulation in the housing market wouldn't go astray!

I guess you'd need to engage a solicitor only if you wanted to keep your bid private
 
This would imho not be useful regulation. The problem of phantom bidding would not go away, it would simply manifest itself under another guise. At the moment bidders can submit revised bids at the drop of a hat - waiting for registers to update would slow down the process dramatically. People could still "bid" albeit more informally - ie by putting in a "conditional bid" or using some other convenient form of words.
 
Ebay anyone?

Sell the place yourself with a reserve. The reserve is displayed so it's completely transparent. All bids are recorded and displayed. No estate agent costs. Massive publicity due to the novelty.

Next week: How to solve global warming.
 

As said above, most bids are not made via a solicitor, but are made directly by the bidders.

Still no way of being sure that the information posted is genuine without posting contact details. Would you like your phone number posted on a public website?

It would also attract vendors/EAs to trawl the listings and find bidders and call them with "other similar but of course better" offers.

Actual sale prices, now that should be published and could be done relatively easily.
 
very true about posting the sale price Lobby. Might give people a better indication of the actual value of a place allowing them to assess the reasonableness of their own bid regardless of the existence of other bids.

I don't think updating bids need be a slow process. Supplying each interested party with a pin number or such could allow them verify their bids instantaneously. in any case slowing down the bidding war might be no bad thing. The EA who sold me my place said his biggest problem was bidders overextending themselves in such a war and having to subsequently pull out
 
If online recording of bids becomes a legal obligation, then it is hard to see how the authorities could administer same without at first seeing and processing documents physically signed by each potential bidder. At the moment, the CRO, PRTB and Revenue registration processes are painfully slow. How would this be any different?
 
Have Shane Ross et al not spent years trying to introduce reforms for the industry- with very little success?

IF all bids were registered not only would it mean an end for the phantom bidder but also situations like in Kildare where an highly unscrupulous EA purchased a site off a pensioner under his companies name would be avoided.
 
Actual sale prices, now that should be published and could be done relatively easily.
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I don't think this is necessary nor is it something that affects the market. Its aprivate sale between two parties, why should it be made public knowledge? Most people tend to keep matters of this importance out of the public domain.

Have Shane Ross et al not spent years trying to introduce reforms for the industry- with very little success?
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I don't think his methods would move any process forward. His 'thinking' on the subject was simplistic and one sided. IAVI have been pushing for changes for some time now.

Re phanthom bids, I would support anything that would remove some of the paranoia and all of the actual dodgy agents. While your at it the process of putting in bids should have more responsibility attached it.
 
MrMan said:
Its aprivate sale between two parties, why should it be made public knowledge? Most people tend to keep matters of this importance out of the public domain.
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To my eyes housing is actually the ONLY market where this sort of information is kept secret. Individuals may indeed choose to keep their own dealings private but those forming the market will generally publish details - Grey markets in shares are an equivalent example (not listed shares).

Unlike other countries there is no need to publish real house prices here - not from a voyeuristic point of view but from a tax perspective. In the US and the UK there are property taxes based on the value of your property. Knowing what properties cost in an area -accurately - is then a valuable piece of information as they effect the taxes you will pay on an ongoing basis.

This site is an example. Zoom right down to the lowest level and you'll see a valuation on every single property for the purposes of tax assesment.

http://www.zillow.com/search/Search.z?citystatezip=san+diego&mode=browse&regionId=54296

Generally speaking the more transparent a market the more likely it is to function in an efficient manner - both in terms of volume and price. I'm sure you'd agree that one of the biggest factors affecting volume is uncertainty over price.
 
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