Conflict of interest?

Not really much of a difference in that case, since viewing demand was very high (most people who were interested did not get to view) and you had to get your viewing to make an offer at all.

Again, how do you show one and not the other? Unless you have multiple savings accounts and can quickly move money around between them each time you make a bid, if you are showing your mortgage approval amount and statements to the seller, how do you conceal how much you have to play with? If you have approval for €300k, and an additional €150k in savings, and want to bid €350k, how do you realistically do this without revealing that you actually have €450k to potentially spend?

"Again, the seller is asking only for proof of funds to support the bid, not how much money the op has in their bank account or the maximum approved mortgage."

Why do you keep repeating this and ignoring the actual question?

Again, how do you show one and not the other? Unless you have multiple savings accounts and can quickly move money around between them each time you make a bid, if you are showing your mortgage approval amount and statements to the seller, how do you conceal how much you have to play with? If you have approval for €300k, and an additional €150k in savings, and want to bid €350k, how do you realistically do this without revealing that you actually have €450k to potentially spend?

I haven't disputed that they are in theory only asking for proof of a bid, I'm asking how you can practically do that without revealing everything else.

Again, again, again, in this hypothetical, how do you reveal that you have €50k in your account and hide the other €100k that you also have in your account? I don't know what kind of savings account you must have, but mine and everyone else's just shows the total balance that is in it.

Transferring large sums of money between accounts is not something that is generally easy to do for most people. There are often limits on how much can be transferred per day of just a few thousand euro, and many types of savings accounts can't have money withdrawn on short notice, or have monthly limits on how much can be added to the account. And then when bidding begins, you can easily have the bid amounts go up by many thousands per day. Going through all this (or getting a letter from a bank) every single time you want to raise your bid is not practical at all, which is probably partially why almost no EAs bother doing stuff like this and why they instead leave it until the bidding ends. If the EA I eventually bought from required jumping through this many hoops, I probably could not have gotten the house I did end up winning bidding on.

Genuine question: Why would someone put in bids with no funds in place? People have brought up this hypothetical in the thread already, but I can't fathom this type of hypothetical person and their motivations for doing so. Is it for some kind of prank? Are there a deluge of would-be buyers who get mortgage approval and still have no idea how much they actually have to spend?

I would be far more concerned about the seller fabricating bids themselves, knowing that the OP has more money to potentially spend, because they have a clear financial incentive to do so, especially when they are their own agent like in this case and will get 100% of the proceeds. The OP said they put in a bid lower than their AIP amount, but if the seller knows what they're approved for (as well as what all other bidders are approved for), they have every reason to drive the price up to that amount, and there's really no way at all to catch them in the act. If the OP has approval for €400k and put in a bid for €350k, the seller knows they could spend €400k easily enough. They can just reply to each bid up to €400k and say they've received a counter-bid that is slightly higher. If they get to see a savings account statement this can go even higher (because in practice, that's what most people would have to give to show they can match their bids above asking price).

It's unethical, and maybe they'll be honest and won't, but you probably don't know them from Adam, and they stand to give themselves themselves potentially tens of thousands of euro in the sale with no real risk. They should be happy enough with a solicitor's letter at the very most, but that is still awkward to do on every bid (many houses I bid on I ended up having to raise my bid 5-10 times, so getting a letter every time would severely slow things down).

That happened years ago when friends or family members of sellers put in fictitious bids to push up the sale price, it was bonkers. So its a good idea that buyers need to show they are not just tyre kickers.

It would be the bidder who is "confident" they can get the funds and then finds they can't and withdraws their bid.

Or the bidder who has 250k approval, but thinks they can get another 30k approval, so bids up and then finds the extra funding is not available. Happens more often that you think as people get emotionally attached to a house very early.

Ideally, I should be able to login to my bank and issue a letter to a given email address confirming that I have access to funds up to whatever my bid is. In the absence of that facility, redacted AIP and/or a solicitor's letter confirming I can back up the bid should be all that's needed AT ANY STAGE.

For the record, unredacted AIP, bank a/c statements, payslips, and Cyril the Squirrel saving stamps booklets going back to the 90's aren't proof that you'll be able to pay in the end. The bank might not grant full approval in the end for any number of reasons. You change/lose jobs, you're on COVID support, medical issues etc.

To the people who think this is ok, ask yourself which is more likely: that a seller/EA would try to maximise the sale price OR that a buyer would bid beyond their savings + AIP? What's the motive? Do you think most sales that fall through are a simple case of the buyer not being able to add two numbers together? Or maliciously going sale agreed and transferring a deposit only to ask for it back again for a laugh? Again, what's the motivation?

I was reading about the process in Scotland. Most property is sold with a 'blind bidding' system. Sellers ask for offers over a minimum price so the price is obviously affected by how many people are interested.

Buyers get a home report pack and after viewing, if they're interested, their solicitor deals with the sellers solicitor on their behalf, sends a note of interest and offers, queries etc. If the seller gets a lot of offers, they set a closing date and invite best & final offers by that date. It's supposed to protect both parties. No idea if its a good or bad system but it sounds a bit more efficient than the lengthy bidding wars we have here.