Identity of counter bidder

Logo

Spoke to friend who made a final bid on a property and it was accepted. During the bidding process the EA agreed to provide name and number of the other person bidding against her. The booking deposit was paid but the EA is not willing to disclose the identity of the other bidder until the contracts have been signed. Is she now entitled to pull out of the purchase and what is common practice in this situation? Thanks

davo10

Logo wrote: »

Spoke to friend who made a final bid on a property and it was accepted. During the bidding process the EA agreed to provide name and number of the other person bidding against her. The booking deposit was paid but the EA is not willing to disclose the identity of the other bidder until the contracts have been signed. Is she now entitled to pull out of the purchase and what is common practice in this situation? Thanks

Is this a joke?

Logo

Sadly no.

bren2002

Of course the estate agent won't provide the other name, this is completely normal.
Even after the contracts are signed, the buyer will never know the details of other bidders

amcalester

Seems very unprofessional of the EA to agree to that. It's none of your friends business who the other bidder was (even if your friend is worried about phantom bids).

She can pull out until contracts are signed, or if she thinks there was no other bidder reduce her bid.

dudara

Why should the EA disclose the name of the other bidder? In fact, it could be a breach of data privacy laws if they did. Your friend should focus on securing the property and really not be bothered with the identity of the other bidder.

bren2002

amcalester wrote: »

Seems very unprofessional of the EA to agree to that.

I suspect a misinterpreted comment, whether consciously or not.

average_runner

Logo wrote: »

Spoke to friend who made a final bid on a property and it was accepted. During the bidding process the EA agreed to provide name and number of the other person bidding against her. The booking deposit was paid but the EA is not willing to disclose the identity of the other bidder until the contracts have been signed. Is she now entitled to pull out of the purchase and what is common practice in this situation? Thanks

It would break the new data code. Your friend is very naive to believe the estate agent. Either they want the property or not and they are paying the market price.

amcalester

bren2002 wrote: »

I suspect a misinterpreted comment, whether consciously or not.

Yeah, could be the name of the seller rather than the other bidder.

mvl

i am confused about something here: is it normal for a buyer to pay the deposit before a bidding process completes ?
i thought the deposit is only paid by the person that gets the bid ?

Bob24

Logo wrote: »

Spoke to friend who made a final bid on a property and it was accepted. During the bidding process the EA agreed to provide name and number of the other person bidding against her. The booking deposit was paid but the EA is not willing to disclose the identity of the other bidder until the contracts have been signed. Is she now entitled to pull out of the purchase and what is common practice in this situation? Thanks

If the EA promised that, they were unprofessional and lying, as it is not something they are in a position to do. And your friend shouldn’t count on getting the name after signing contracts either.

Assuming they still haven’t signed contracts at their solicitor’s, your friend can certainly pull-out and doesn’t need to provide any justification. But if they are happy with the price agreed upon, the name of the other bidder should be of no relevance to decide whether to proceed or not.

LiamoSail

If an estate agent gave out my info to someone I had been bidding against, I'd be pretty annoyed and would certainly be following up with the estate agent.

Logo

Okay. I honestly believed that this was a new way for EA's to do business with some transparency. Thanks for the info. I will pass it on to her.

SNNUS

Why is she hung up about the other bidder? She got the house so maybe she should put her energy into that..

Claw Hammer

Logo wrote: »

Spoke to friend who made a final bid on a property and it was accepted. During the bidding process the EA agreed to provide name and number of the other person bidding against her. The booking deposit was paid but the EA is not willing to disclose the identity of the other bidder until the contracts have been signed. Is she now entitled to pull out of the purchase and what is common practice in this situation? Thanks

If she is paid a booking deposit, but not signed the contract and paid over the balance of 10%, she is entitled to withdraw from the sale and get the booking deposit back. This applies even if she has just changed her mind and not on account of any other factor.

Logo

SNNUS wrote: »

Why is she hung up about the other bidder?

Because the other bidder might not exist and she might have paid thousands over the actual house value for no reason besides the EA's tactics

awec

Logo wrote: »

Because the other bidder might not exist and she might have paid thousands over the actual house value for no reason besides the EA's tactics

By far the biggest conspiracy theory on this forum is that there is an epidemic of EAs just inventing fake bidders to push up prices by a few grand.

If she wants the house, bid as far as she thinks its worth. No point melting your head with the notion that you could get it cheaper if you could prove the other person didn't exist (because they do exist).

davo10

Logo wrote: »

Because the other bidder might not exist and she might have paid thousands over the actual house value for no reason besides the EA's tactics

What? Nobody forced her to bid, in all my years of looking at this forum, not one poster has been able to provide evidence of the elusive phantom bidder.

If she feels it is not worth what she bid, she can pull out before contract is signed. She'll feel a bit of a knob if the house sells for more or she has to pay more for another property.

LiamoSail

Logo wrote: »

Because the other bidder might not exist and she might have paid thousands over the actual house value for no reason besides the EA's tactics

And what outcome is she expecting? The estate agent to throw their hands to heaven, admit this canny customer has out smarted them and offer a refund of thousands??

In what circumstances is she seriously expecting to now get the property for cheaper through that estate agent ?

Bob24

Logo wrote: »

Because the other bidder might not exist and she might have paid thousands over the actual house value for no reason besides the EA's tactics

TBH there will always be tactics and getting a name won't guarantee nothing dodgy happened. What matters is that she thinks the price is right, how it came to that price is irrelevant.

One personal bad experience: after bidding for some time on a place, an EA told us there was just one other bidder and the seller wanted to go sale agreed quickly, so they were asking each party to give there maximum offer by a certain deadline and the highest offer would be accepted.

We submitted our offer and were eventually told it was the lowest one so we moved on. A few weeks later we saw the selling price on the property price register and it was clear we had been taken for a ride: the price was just 100 euros over our offer, for a property going for several hundred thousands and where the bid increments had been 1000 or 2000 euros. No way it could have happened by chance and clearly for whatever reason the EA wanted to sell to the other bidder but wanted first to generate a significantly increased offer from us to submit it to them and get them to pay that price.

CeilingFly

Logo wrote: »

Because the other bidder might not exist and she might have paid thousands over the actual house value for no reason besides the EA's tactics

If she's paid well over what the house is worth, then that's her fault for being so foolish.

Too many people have convinced themselves a certain house is their perfect house and then go way way over the value.

There are plenty of houses out there and tons coming on stream, tell her to pull out, take a deep breath and set limits.


As for an EA making up bids - most are on 1% commission. An extra 10k is €100 extra - if caught making false bids, they lose their licence and fined 10k (it has happened).

So unlikely, - just another person with the same thoughts of believing it "the house" and the must get it.

Logo

Logo wrote: »

friend made a final bid on a property and was accepted. During the bidding EA agreed to provide name and number of other person bidding against her. Booking deposit was paid but the EA is not willing to disclose identity of the other bidder until contracts have been signed. Is she now entitled to pull out of the purchase and what is common practice? Thanks

So I assume that it's not a such great idea to revert back to an earlier bid?

testicles

This post has been deleted.

Logo

CeilingFly wrote: »

As for an EA making up bids -. if caught making false bids, they lose their licence and fined 10k (it has happened).

Unless the EA can provide names & numbers - I would be interested if you can provide a source for that 'fact'.

Fol20

I highly doubt an ea would ever give out personal info. They would be breaking so many privacy laws and could even risk their license. If you believe there is a phantom bid and you don’t think the property is worth the accepted bid, just back out now. Phantom bids are a thing of the past. Ea have very little to gain and everything to loose for doing something stupid like that. Remember that the ea get about 1/2pc of sale price so an extra 10k is in affect a max extra commission is a 100-200e and in the grander scale of the volume of sales is very little. They are more interested in closing out a sale as so many of them collapse.

Bob24

Logo wrote: »

So I assume that it's not a such great idea to revert back to an earlier bid?

After paying the booking deposit? No. Exception would be if a surveyor uncovers issues with the property which were not obviously apparent and would be costly to fix, then it would be fair enough for a buyer to go back to the seller and say that they will go ahead only if the price is reduced by a certain figure and otherwise they will pull out.

But if your friend goes back to the agent saying they want to revert back to an earlier offer out of nowhere and after paying the deposit, I assume they will be told to either stick with their last offer or pull-out.

Fol20

Logo wrote: »

Unless the EA can provide names & numbers - I would be interested to know how and can you provide a source for that 'fact'.

Most of them now only accept offer via email to cover them self, they may also have a ledger or the reception in some case might accept bids but you would normally have multiple parties at play

Logo

Fol20 wrote: »

Most of them now only accept offer via email to cover them self, they may also have a ledger or the reception in some case might accept bids but you would normally have multiple parties at play

I assume you haven't purchased many properties lately.

mvl

Bob24 wrote: »

TBH there will always be tactics and getting a name won't guarantee nothing dodgy happened. What matters is that she thinks the price is right, how it came to that price is irrelevant.

One personal bad experience: after bidding for some time on a place, an EA told us there was just one other bidder and the seller wanted to go sale agreed quickly, so they were asking each party to give there maximum offer by a certain deadline and the highest offer would be accepted.

We submitted our offer and were eventually told it was the lowest one so we moved on. A few weeks later we saw the selling price on the property price register and it was clear we had been taken for a ride: the price was just 100 euros over our offer, for a property going for several hundred thousands and where the bid increments had been 1000 or 2000 euros. No way it could have happened by chance and clearly for whatever reason the EA wanted to sell to the other bidder but wanted first to generate a significantly increased offer from us to submit it to them and get them to pay that price.

my experience was that the property register update can be months later, not weeks later. can it be that these other bidder paid cash, so were preferred because of that ?

blue note

awec wrote: »

By far the biggest conspiracy theory on this forum is that there is an epidemic of EAs just inventing fake bidders to push up prices by a few grand.

If she wants the house, bid as far as she thinks its worth. No point melting your head with the notion that you could get it cheaper if you could prove the other person didn't exist (because they do exist).

There's absolutely no way that doesn't happen. The financial motivation for it to happen is minimal - the extra commission on an extra 10k even wouldn't be significant. But if estate agents are promising prices to vendors they want to meet them for their reputations. And it must be incredibly difficult to prove that an offer was made up.

What I expect happens far more often however, is that the vendor or their friend bids on the property. Keep on just outbidding the others and when they pull out you pull out a week later too and offer it to them for their max. Again, I can see why this would happen and can't see why it wouldn't so therefore it must happen.

And as regards telling people not to worry about the price they pay other than do they think the house is worth it - this attitude boils my p1ss altogether. I might feel a place is reasonable value at €450k. But I'm only content paying that if there's someone else content to pay €445 or whatever. I'm certainly not content to be effectively conned into paying it by an unscrupulous vendor or EA.

Also, I think the most common fake bid is other bidders staying in when they don't intend to follow through. People bidding on a few places and worrying about whether to take them after they're the highest bidder, as opposed to actually thinking about whether they're prepared to pay what they're offering.

TheBoyConor

GDPR.
They wouldn't be able to give you the other bidders details without their consent. They'd be in deep **** of they did.

Also why would they give you the details? What's to say you wouldn't bully or intimidate them or beat the shyt out of them to withdraw their offer or not bid? Because there are some people who would be like that.