Softening house market?

This sounds similar to my experience with many estate agents to be honest.

One in particular was absolutely shocking, the owner actually gave out to me for calling their advertised number on Daft during office hours. Then when I finally managed to arrange a viewing, he rushed us as he had to collect his son or some nonsense. We had all of 5 minutes to view the whole house without a word of apology.

I’ve had varying experience with EA’s but I’m polite while not believing much of what they say. They’re not your friend.

Have had some agents completely ignore me during a viewing, others very overbearing. The worst was after bidding back and forth for a property for over a month, emails constantly when a new counter-offer was submitted and I ended up way over the asking price. Then suddenly couldn’t get a response. Then suddenly the vendors are on a weeks holiday (they weren’t as I had a viewing in an adjacent property and they were very much at home). Then suddenly they’re actually on 2 weeks holiday. Eventually after a lot of pestering the EA told me they wanted 10k more and I backed out. Absolute messers and wasted my time.

It is the dysfunction that is unique. Don't see this level of dysfunction elsewhere.

Is it really unique though? It seems it is very difficult to find a rental in Dublin and when you do it is at a much higher price than you would like to pay. This makes it difficult to save for a deposit. But there is no requirement for the rental prices to allow room to accumulate a deposit.

They are licensed and regulated with a set of rules to abide by.

There’s two ways that this practice could be widespread.

1. Multi million euro firms like Sherry Fitz knowingly allow their staff to ignore these rules and make ‘fake bids’ permissible in their organisations. I think this is almost impossible as it would be a matter of time before a disgruntled former employee whistleblew and got them in trouble with the PRSA. Widespread & intentional ignoring of basic rules by reputable firms is rare. You get caught eventually.
2. Individual EAs are going rogue and flaunting the rules of their firms to earn an extra few quid. This is more plausible but then the firm would absolutely have access to data, emails etc. and so every time an individual did this they’d be risking their career.

Its just very unlikely this is happening with any regularity. It’s much much more plausible that it’s cases like my own. I got outbid. I got sour. I wanted to believe there was some underhanded dealings going on to make myself feel better. There wasn’t.

This was only a couple of months back so too soon for PPR now. Given the fact we never heard from her again I'd say either the bid was genuine or the vendor was just not willing to accept our bid regardless of it being over the asking price and she was chancing her arm trying to get us to match the vendor's expectations instead of looking for another buyer.

I had exactly the same thing happen to me with Auctionera a couple of years ago.

There was a house I really wanted and I bid the asking price on Auctionera. Got into an ebay styled bidding war in the last few minutes on their website and was outbid in the end by two other bidders who far exceeded what I could bid. Sold for 75k over asking.

A few months later I got a call from Auctionera asking if I was still interested at my highest bid (about 50k over asking). I'd gone sale agreed on another property at this stage, so it was a firm 'NO', however was a bit disappointed as I'd really liked the original house and would have happily paid that at the time.

Interestingly, I saw the house again up for sale two months later, with The Property Shop instead of Auctionera this time.

Thought I'd check up on it there last month on the Property Price Register and in the end it sold for 10k UNDER the original asking price.

So I'd actually bid 60k over what it sold for back when I was caught up in the Auctionera bidding.

I'm delighted someone else outbid me as it was incredibly overpriced looking back, but at the same time annoyed as it would have been a steal to get at the final price it went for.

So yeah folks, be careful with Auctionera's online bidding and don't get caught up in the madness.

It's actually worse than Ebay. On Ebay, a bid is binding!

I have put bids through DNG, sherry and the likes and I never showed proof of my funds. I have it but nobody asked.

So what is your point on Auctioneera.ie. At least their fees are way lower than the others and do exactly the same job.

Well obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion but how are they more cowboys than other estate agents? They have an online platform which is transparent. Their fees are set fees.

I know for fact that on a house I bid through DNG, the winner bid against itself. DNG ghosted myself on two bids. So how are they better?

https://www.inflationtool.com/euro-ireland/2002-to-present-value?amount=175000&year2=2022&frequency=yearly

244k seems low to me and I'm not sure how accurate calendar above is

It is a very very easy crime with no way of proving any wrong doing. I got very lucky I had no money to play with when I bought my first house. The EA called me back the same day after each of my bids to say there was a 1k higher bid. I told him my limit and he said no worries, the vendor will accept whoever bids 'x' first which just happened to be 2k above my limit which was also the current bid. Why would he stop a fast bidding war because I would bid first? We both knew what was happening. I bid and went sale agreed and that was that. 1.5% adds up when multiplied by a lot of sales.

1) Next time he sells a similar house in that area, the benchmark for that area will be +10k

2) If the EA gets a reputation for getting the best prices for sellers, he will get the business in the first place.

It isn't about 150 Euro

Auctioneera is an absolute cod. It's all the pressure of a real auction without the obligation of the follow through - it's a recipe for bad faith bidding.

I actively avoid Auctioneera listings. The couple of viewings I went to the agent was forcing the bidding number card thing into my hand even though I had expressed no interest in the property. In one case I was heading out the door of a busy viewing and he followed me out to give me the card.

Why is this bad? Well, it creates a feeling of urgency for those that are interested by making it seem like there's more competition than there likely is.

It's also feels, like mentioned above, more like an eBay auction, complete with last minute sniping. But it's not an auction, and thus bids are not binding. So you get craziness going on in terms of bidding wars that may or may not be genuinely reflective of bidders' real convictions as there's no protections against bad faith bidding. I'm entirely unsurprised that some of the worst bidding wars, and subsequent insane sale agreed prices, I've seen have been Auctioneera listings.

I genuinely can't believe it's legal, as I believe genuine property auction bids are binding. It feels like it's exploiting a loophole (or more likely flaunting soft regulation) by having a timed auction format.

Throw up an apology there as your next post.

If an estate agent gets a name for that, hes going to lose a lot more than e150, it's really not worth it. I've bought 6 houses, 2 from the same agent, Ive become friends with him since, I'm also friends with other agents that I have spolen to about a property they had for sale, or one that I was buying. Ive yet to see anything resembling the kind of complicated fake bids going on.

Ive bought from incompetent auctioneers, where I had to get a friend (auctioneer) to ring them, even to get a viewing from them. I've had a deposit taken for a house when I've found out that the house was no longer his listing. I've had buyers ask for 10k more the morning of close, I've had buyers hold off for 3 months to sign, because they wanted the bank to knock e700 off their debt (foreclosure).

But these are just down to incompetence on the part of the auctioneer, or silliness on the part of the seller-other than the auctioneer that took my deposit lol.

People aren't getting into ridiculous bidding wars but decent properties that are ready for occupation are still being snapped up for big money

Just a note that 3-4 months is a pipe dream given the situation today when it comes to the planning board. My wife and I have been at sale agreed stage on a property since May of this year on a property that has been waiting on the board to meet and rubber stamp retention for sheds that have been on site for 10+ years and are completely innocuous (rural property, sheds not even visible from anywhere outside of the property).

Retention was filed for in January.

First, they said it would be ruled on in June. Then they said September. Then they said October. Then they said November. Now they say 'soon, but we can't tell you any date specifically' even though the statute states that if they don't make the ruling within the timeframe allotted (now long since past), they legally must give out a new date for the ruling. Note that the chairman and vice chairman of the board just stepped down amidst accusations of wrongdoing.

In short, An Bord Pleanála is basically broken in its current state and if you need to wait on planning permission for anything expect to be waiting until the end of next f*ng year if you kick off the process at this point. Plan accordingly.

Just a note though...if you're a cash buyer, you don't have to wait for planning retention to come through. You can just buy the place. I wish I was a cash buyer, I'd have paid the cash and we'd have moved into the house months ago...but since we're relying on BOI for a mortgage, we cannot close the sale without the planning retention being approved because of BOI's requirements around the mortgage.

House sales, in particular how they are dealt with by professionals have changed a lot since the last boom/bust.

Lots of solicitors and engineers have gotten sued for not carrying out proper checks; if as a seller you don't have your house prepared properly for sale, there will be delays and maybe it'll fall through.

I used a very pernickety solicitor and asked him what would he want to know if he was acting for buyer and to proceed as such.

Things like mapping, deeds, planning, spousal consent, tenancy termination all have to be sorted prior to going sale agreed if you want a smooth sale.

I sold in Cork recently which has a particular problem with subsidence. It is typically caused by a water leak in water supply or drainage system (which will wash away the fine materials under your foundations over time) and most engineers will recommend a drains survey to cover themselves. Rather than being told at contract stage that I had a leak (and would then be under time pressure to fix it or sale fall through) I got survey done before house was put up for sale.

There was a mapping query, in spite of a very recent survey by a very well known surveyor, but dealt with immediately.

Where people are nervy your best bet is to be up front and get everything out in the open.