Making an offer: how much?

tea and coffee

We've seen a house we like. Ticks all the boxes. It's up for 395. The EA said the seller is building another house and is not in the humour for long drawn out process and would accept 400.
Should we offer asking and risk being outbid or - god help us- trust the EA and offer 400 and hope we're early doors and get it accepted?

Askthe EA

tea and coffee wrote: »

We've seen a house we like. Ticks all the boxes. It's up for 395. The EA said the seller is building another house and is not in the humour for long drawn out process and would accept 400.
Should we offer asking and risk being outbid or - god help us- trust the EA and offer 400 and hope we're early doors and get it accepted?

How much do you want the house? Is 400 in your budget? Does anything else really matter?

I'll be honest, its impossible to know from an asking price what a vendor really expects, even for EAs, at times. If its worth 400k to you and it can be removed from the market immediately, maybe any possible overpayment is balanced by the time and stress house hunting costs you.

minkey

That could just be a ploy from the EA..I dont know how many times we were told similar when we were searching a few years ago. If u go in at asking price then u set the bar if other bidders are interested. If u are the first to put in a bid there is no reason to go in with the full asking price.

drunkmonkey

If there's no offers on it, put in a bid of 345k and don't budge until someone offers more. That's your starting offer.
400k is a good chunk of change it might be out of a lot of peoples price range so the bidding might not be intense as a 300k house.
Don't ever big against yourself if there's no other bidders, the estate agent has asked you to do that, don't trust them from here on in.

BarryD2

Unfortunately, I don't think you can ever trust an estate agent in these matters. Only your own judgement.

tea and coffee

Apparently someone offered 415 as a first bid to try and secure the house. I was incredulous when the EA called. Why would anyone offer so far in excess of the asking when there are no other offers.
When I told EA we weren't in a chain you could nearly hear him jumping for joy thinking I'd offer more.
Do you think it's a real bid?

drunkmonkey

Repeat "The estate agent is not my friend"

drunkmonkey

tea and coffee wrote: »

Apparently someone offered 415 as a first bid to try and secure the house. I was incredulous when the EA called. Why would anyone offer so far in excess of the asking when there are no other offers.
When I told EA we weren't in a chain you could nearly hear him jumping for joy thinking I'd offer more.
Do you think it's a real bid?

I think it's bull****e to be honest, on one had the guy wants to sell and someone makes an opening bid 20k over the asking price and he's hanging around for more bids. I don't believe it.

Captain Flaps

Offer 375. If you go in at 400 it gives the impression that people are keen to pay more, and straight away you've set precedent. If you get outbid fine, go up incrementally. You want it to take some time to get to 400 and make the seller feel there's nothing to gain by holding on for longer when more bids may not materialise.

Edit: posted this before I saw you mention the 415 bid.

Sesame

Agree with everything above. Its highly unlikely to be a real bid. I'm pretty sure I bid against a makey up bidder for my place. It was on the market for months with no budge then all of a sudden we were in a bidding war with another "cash buyer" bidder.
The estate agents can sniff out urgency and desperation and use it against you to get a good price.

If you do bid against someone. Never place your counter-bid the same day. Sleep on it. Remain calm and collected. Thee's good advice above too. Start low. And if the 415 bid is really real, more fool them.

Alanstrainor

Yes I would agree with most of the above. Make your offer and leave it at that for a while. I wouldn't trust the sellers estate agent as far as I could throw him. But it doesn't mean that there hasn't been an offer made. I have heard of stranger things happening. There's stupidity and bravado on both sides, it wouldn't be the first time I've heard of someone putting in a first bid far above asking to "scare people away".

So make your bid, whatever that may be and sit back for a while.

M.Cribben

An opening offer of 5% above asking price is not that unusual imo, especially given most property in Dublin is selling for 10% above asking. If you aren't interested in paying over 415k for the property, simply walk away. Don't waste your own (and the EA's) time and energy playing games.

jimmycrackcorm

tea and coffee wrote:

Apparently someone offered 415 as a first bid to try and secure the house.

What happened to that if the seller is willing to deal at 400?

Have you any idea what other houses are going for nearby, i.e. checking the property price register?

1641

If it "ticked all the boxes" for you it likely did for someone else also. I suspect that when the EA said to you that €400k would secure it, he was tempting you to bid this much to establish a baseline. For one thing, he couldn't be sure of this himself as only the vendor can decide. It is very rare nowadays for a first bid to be accepted - at least before allowing a good wait for a counter bid.

If you think that €415 is too much (or is, in some way, not real) then tell the EA that you are not interested at that price but would be if it fell through for any reason.Remember that some people bid high and then don't - or can't - follow through, eg, can't raise the money or reconsider whether it is really their "dream house".

facehugger99

tea and coffee wrote: »

Apparently someone offered 415 as a first bid to try and secure the house. I was incredulous when the EA called. Why would anyone offer so far in excess of the asking when there are no other offers.
When I told EA we weren't in a chain you could nearly hear him jumping for joy thinking I'd offer more.
Do you think it's a real bid?

Of course it's a real bid.

This common perception that EA's are making up phantom bids is an urban-legend without any evidence to support it.

The EA is looking to sell the house ASAP and claim their commission. Why would they make up a bid that's likely to cause you to pull out of bidding for the property?

Just ignore the background noise of people telling you what they think is happening - offer more if feel the house is worth it and what you can afford to pay - if the €415 bid is in excess of either of these criteria, walk away and keep looking.

stargazer 68

We got our keys in Feb to our house. Bid the asking price just before Christmas after an open viewing. Got a call a couple of days later to say that the Vendor would take 5k more to sell. Offered the 5k more if the property came off the market and the next open viewing was cancelled. That is exactly what happened.

Now I'm sure it was the fact the it was a quiet time but we were the only bid on the property. If the vendor had hung on until after Christmas she would have got much more for the property but she wanted rid of it. So it can be done.

M.Cribben

facehugger99 wrote: »

Of course it's a real bid.

This common perception that EA's are making up phantom bids is an urban-legend without any evidence to support it.

The EA is looking to sell the house ASAP and claim their commission. Why would they make up a bid that's likely to cause you to pull out of bidding for the property?

Agree 100%.
People seem to have this assumption that any bid against them is a fake ghost bid. That they are the only ones that could possibly be interested in the property. Given the chronic supply shortage at the moment, the opposite is generally true. Some of the larger estate agents turnover millions every year. They aren't going to risk losing their license to earn an extra 100-200 euro commission.


As regards the first bid being 5% over the asking, I remembered reading something about local authorities and councils adopting this strategy as they have huge budgets and are not interested in wasting time with long drawn out bidding wars. Could be a possibility.

Askthe EA

tea and coffee wrote: »

Apparently someone offered 415 as a first bid to try and secure the house. I was incredulous when the EA called. Why would anyone offer so far in excess of the asking when there are no other offers.
When I told EA we weren't in a chain you could nearly hear him jumping for joy thinking I'd offer more.
Do you think it's a real bid?

I bet you any money you want that it's a real bid. After years in the industry I've yet to see a phantom bid.

Yourmama

Ask one of your friends to enquire and see what they will be told. Make sure your friend emphasises they don't want to spend over €400k.

BarryD2

facehugger99 wrote: »

The EA is looking to sell the house ASAP and claim their commission. Why would they make up a bid that's likely to cause you to pull out of bidding for the property?

I guess that depends on how business is going for the EA. If it's booming, plenty of sales and commissions flowing.. then they have a bit of latitude to play around and see if they can up the game a bit.

Happens all the time in regular business with job pricing. A business with plenty of work/ sales will play high when asked for a quote. If they don't get it, nothing much lost. And if they do, then that's a nice bit of extra dosh.

Why would the property business be any different?

machiavellianme

Askthe EA wrote: »

I bet you any money you want that it's a real bid. After years in the industry I've yet to see a phantom bid.

Of course an estate agent would say that.
The same way politicians think they offer a great service to the country for the obscene pay they receive or the top bankers think they did nothing wrong in causing the recent boom/bust.

Samuel T. Cogley

machiavellianme wrote: »

Of course an estate agent would say that.
The same way politicians think they offer a great service to the country for the obscene pay they receive or the top bankers think they did nothing wrong in causing the recent boom/bust.

This discussion has been done to death. It's simply not in an EA's interest to make up bids. It increases their commission by a miniscule amount and exposes them to a risk of sanction. At the moment they've bugger all reason to do it in this market.

limnam

Askthe EA wrote: »

I bet you any money you want that it's a real bid. After years in the industry I've yet to see a phantom bid.

I think for the most part you might be right.


What's odd is when you see a house on for a long time and no movement.


You call and all of a sudden there's a hive of activity.


You check again 6 months later, house still sitting there.


you call. Hive of activity.



It's a bit mad ted.

facehugger99

BarryD2 wrote: »

I guess that depends on how business is going for the EA. If it's booming, plenty of sales and commissions flowing.. then they have a bit of latitude to play around and see if they can up the game a bit.

Happens all the time in regular business with job pricing. A business with plenty of work/ sales will play high when asked for a quote. If they don't get it, nothing much lost. And if they do, then that's a nice bit of extra dosh.

Why would the property business be any different?

Probably because the scenario you've compared it to is completely different.

dude_abided

Askthe EA wrote: »

I bet you any money you want that it's a real bid. After years in the industry I've yet to see a phantom bid.

A friend has direct proof of estate agent lying about prices. Not just hearsay, I saw the email that he sent to the wrong person by accident.

Funnily enough he got the house :pac: