How to Place an Offer with Estate Agent

BarraOG

Hi,

I've found a house that I would like to buy. The house has no certificate of compliance but I employed a Surveyor to examine it and there are no major issues. I am a cash buyer.

According to the Estate Agent another cash buyer has put in an offer on the house for 120k. However the Estate Agent in question is well known in town as being as crooked as a bag of snakes and I am worried that I am being conned.

With this in mind, can you advise me as to how I should bid on the house? I was thinking of emailing her and saying that I am interested in placing a bid and if she can confirm for me that there is an unconditional bid of 120k on the house and that the bid has been made within the last fortnight. If she says there is then I believe I should, via mail, make an unconditional offer of 125k and ask her to email me if there are any further developments.

Is this the correct approach in your opinion? Are there any other questions I should ask, with regard to competing bids, before making my bid?

There is of course nothing binding if I make a unconditional bid via email, right? The binding part is only when I sign the contract.

Thanks for your help,

Barra

Hombre Lobo

I would just call them up and let them know you'd like to put in an offer.
Usually they'll confirm the existing offer on the house.

You might be best to go up in increments of 1k though.
If there's a current offer of 120k in then you may as well go in with 121k instead of 125k.
If there's another cash buyer then they're just as likely to go 1k up on your 125 offer. If they do happen to drop out before 125 then you can end up saying yourself a possible few thousand.

The one thing you'll quickly learn about EA's when bidding on a house is to never trust a word out of their mouth. They are there to get the highest price for a seller and they will sometimes pressure you into upping your bid as quickly as possible.

I was recently bidding on a property and there was about 2 or 3 others involved as well (or at least that's what they made it seem like). We were going up in 1k increments and EA left me a call that I couldn't take at the time. I called back when I got the chance and they let me know the current offer and I said I'd think about it as at this stage it was near my limit. They wanted a response within 2 hours as the "deal was closing". Anyway, I called back and upped my offer. They came back about an hour later to say it had gone up one more. At this stage I bailed out as it was at my limit. This was a couple of weeks ago and the house was still for sale nearly two weeks later so the whole "deal was closing" thing was just ploy to push buyers into raising the price as quickly as possible.

Just make sure to set yourself a limit on what you think it's worth to you and what you're willing to pay and walk away if it goes beyond that.

Hombre Lobo

BarraOG wrote: »

There is of course nothing binding if I make a unconditional bid via email, right? The binding part is only when I sign the contract.

And just on this point, there is nothing legally binding you to the purchase of a property until contracts are signed by both parties.

If you go sale agreed, you will usually give a deposit to the EA which is fully refundable until the house is sold and contracts are signed by both. The only costs you'll incur if you do decide to withdraw last minute are your solicitor fees and any structural survey you had done.

Buying/selling a property in this country is wild west type of stuff, it can be extremely long drawn out and nobody is penalized for pulling out of a sale at the 11th hour for whatever reason. It can be very frustrating and stressful at times unfortunately.