What to do next 😣

The only thing you can do is either put a time limit on the offer or see if you want to pay what the vendor wants. That's it really

The agent works for the seller to get the best price. It sounds like your offers were insulting and you have now upped your original offer by €56k which makes you sound like the unreasonable one that as a seller people would want to avoid

Unreasonable how exactly?

You played your cards, leave it on the table and walk away.

You need to understand that you don't get attached emotionally of a house you see. You will lose every bid you put out there if you get so emotional.

You felt it was over priced by 50k then you played right in their hands by upping it by 56k! Even so I am sure you were right about being overpriced as you need to spend more money on it.

How do you even know you are bidding against someone else. Don't forget the seller has much to lose as well by you walking off from his house, he lost a solid bidder.

it may be the time of year. If the other bidders are in fact real but were relying on exemptions from the restrictions on deposit or income multiples, sometimes the banks exhaust their quota of exemptions for the year but these reset on January 1st.

Or maybe people just aren't interested in looking at houses in the lead-up to Christmas?

So it may well be that the EA was advising the seller to hold off until the new year to see if more buyers entered the fray, which then happened?

As noted above, there isn't much else you can do except set your own ceiling, communicate that to the vendor and see what happens.

Great idea to write a letter about how much you love the house. When we were buying we wrote a Shakespearean style sonnet about how lovely the was and sent it to the sellers. "Thy fascias are as fair as ..."

A couple of years ago I was dealing with a similar situation, except that we offered the asking price, we were messed around by the vendor and we walked away because while we "liked" the house and certain elements of it, there were issues with it and work to be done so we walked away. Out of curiosity I checked it on the PPR, vendor held out for 10 months and got 100k over what was a hefty asking price.....

from opening post

I strongly feel the house isn’t worth more

walk

Might be an inheritance or a second home.

The sellers have done you a service by upping the price. Had you bought the house, even at your original 50K below the initial asking price, you would have been making a terrible mistake. Don`t you realize the government borrowed 200 billion since 2008 for the express purpose of re inflating house prices. Had you bought the house, you would be paying an inflated price and still be on the hook for the 200 billion the country borrowed. If you can afford to buy a house in this country, you really shouldn`t. I would rather emigrate. Also, don`t forget, as consumer inflation rises but house prices fall (as happened in December) you will lose and lose again. In fact, the government is relying on inflation continuing in order to bring down it`s liability.

Back around 2009, the government pulled all kinds of shenanigans to re-bloat house prices just so their precious NAMA could claim it was making a profit. First the government put up all kinds of impediments to prevent banks from repossessing houses because only by keeping houses off the market could they force house prices higher. They also put a false floor under house prices back in 2009 by insuring a traunche of about a thousand houses against negative equity which resulting in buyers entering the market before it had a chance to bottom out naturally.

As I see it, two things are preventing a faster fall in house prices, the first is the multinationals. If they were to get into difficulty, there would be far fewer eligable buyers. A weakening US dollar and precarious global economy would do that and we will see if those conditions are met in 2023.

The second factor that could undercut house prices in this country is persistant CPI inflation which impacts mortgage holders like everyone else. After all, everyone has to eat. And of course there are the higher interest rates, although it should be said the ECB is not really serious about fighting inflation (which is why it will stay high) because the higher interest rates that would require would probably put rapid downward pressure on house prices. But, they are playing with fire, raising interest rates slowly is like stretching an elastic band. It could snap.

It is not surprising that countries like Italy are urging the ECB to go slower with it`s interest rate hikes. Italy has a lot of debt so the cracks in EU cohesion are beginning to appear. We will see more of that as the year progresses.

Final point, if house prices do start to fall and people go into negative equity, they will default which will cause house prices to fall more rapidly.

The government spent 200 billion making house prices high. Given the ECB`s mandate to protect the Euro, it will be difficult for the Irish government to explain away the loss of that 200 billion in home equity prices to the Irish taxpayer when houses crash next time. This time there can be no bailout and the Irish government may well have to pay that negative equity compensation to those who bought the insured tranche of houses back in 2009.

Without getting myself into trouble, I'll just add that the state also ensured that there is effectively a never-ending supply demand for what housing exists. In fact, I'd opine that that has been more effective than any amount of financial jiggery-pokery.

You massively underbid and then came up by a large amount. That makes you appear unreasonable to any seller. What percentages are we talking about on value because that might clarify why you would so much in value but it is different if we are talking about a small percentage but that is doubtful given the amount you are complaining about. In a seller market many properties have an offer price at least 10% below what they really expect.