Thoughts on best way to bid for a house I really want?

Are there any existing bids that you are aware of? I'd suggest go in with 10% less than list price if there are no current bids. Having a 20% swing available in your back pocket could be advantageous. If you go to your ceiling straightaway that could tempt the seller into thinking its more desirable than it may actually be.

Offer asking price. Increase your bid only if there is another offer.

You have any proof of this or is it just paranoid codswallop?

OP - if you know they won't go under asking from what you've been told and it's a new enough listing (is it in a desirable area?) I'd probably just go in at asking tbh.

They might come back with a counter a bit over asking.

Of course I have no proof but it happened to me 3 times, on the only 3 properties I ever bid on.

I know the EA often gets blamed in this sort of scenario, but lets say the vendor has a mate with AIP in the last say 3 years, is there anything to stop vendor arranging with the mate to make a few phony bids?

I was in similar situation buying my house. I could afford to pay about 10% over asking. I bid the asking price and then the incremental offer increases started coming in from the agent. After a few days of this, I rang the agent and said here's my max bid, I can't afford to go any higher. It was accepted the next day.

If you really want the house, there's no harm in trying to secure it by offering your max and walking away if it's not accepted. Is it possible I overpaid a bit, sure, but it was years ago so it's pretty irrelevant at this stage - to me, anyway.

Good luck with it, glad I'll never have to buy another house again:-)

Hi people, I was going to open a new thread, but feel my question could also fit in here.

We're currently at the end of a bidding war for a house we really want, price already almost 10% higher than asking price, and it's been back and forth for almost 3 weeks now.

The auctioneer just let us know that as this has been dragging for too long, they are looking to set a deadline for 11 am tomorrow. We're currently the highest bidders.

My question: Is that an expectation that we put our best foot forward by 11 and that there will be no opportunity to outbid after 11 if we're not the highest bidders? Any ideas?

No chance in hell, EAs tell the truth and they are honest. Yes on every house, they seem to have an offer already 🤣

The EA makes very little from a property going 10% or 20% overestimated value. The owner makes a lot of money and as @robbiezero said it's easy for a vendor to get someone to bid, getting AIP is easy and nothing is final till contacts are exchanged.

If you were sitting in the house next year and you had paid 20% over asking would it bother you?

We were like you with a lot of failed bids and then we decided to up our bid by what we thought the property would be worth in a couple of years. It drove all the other bidders away and made the vendor bite and take the property off the market.

Here we are now, very happy with what we paid for it.

The only thing that would make you feel bad is if there was a huge crash. But even then you are still in your house that you wanted. You are not in the renting nightmare. And no bank is ever going to get a repossession in this country off anyone even attempting to pay the mortgage.

I am glad there are posters who believe in the honesty of EAs. At the end of the day, they have to earn a bread, having hardly any skills.

Go in at asking - which would be a strong opening bid - and as advised tell them you're a cash buyer but you are also considering a bid on another property which would be 2nd choice.

In addition set the EA a deadline with which to accept the offer or you'll go elsewhere (whether you do or not is up to you).

genuine question but if your paying something and genuinely trying they cant repossess?

This is personal experience, but I have a friend who got into a bidding war a few years ago. What happened was that he would make an offer, and it would remain the highest offer for a about a week before the other bidder would make a counter offer about 500-1000 euro over his offer. This happened for about a month, driving the price up by about 20k on a 300k house.  

My friend was getting rather fed up, so he did something interesting. Rather than making a large offer to blow the other bidder out of the water, he told the EA that he would match the counter bid. This flabbergasted the EA, who naturally pushed for a higher offer, but my friend stuck to his guns. After a few days of hearing nothing, he was told that the buyer had accepted his offer.

I strongly suspect that there was no other interested party in this case, and that the EA was lying to accrue a higher selling price. When the bluff was called, he folded and took the offer. Of course, this isn't true in most cases, but it serves as an example of the sickening behaviour that exists in the property market. Don't be afraid to call an EA out if you feel that they acting the maggot, and remember that they are not your friend.

Yes, if you are making any effort at all and engaging with lenders your house will not be repossessed in Ireland.

Also the reason why we had suych high interest rates and shortage of houses the last few years.

In Ireland you dont have to pay your mortage (well you have to make some sort of attempt, but not much). And you also dont need to pay rent either if you dont feel like it. When you get booted out after a few years of not paying your rent you just move on to the next victim/landlord and do the same thing again for a few years.

Read the rest of your article, without leaving bits out.

Let me put it aother way. Do you yourself think that in Ireland it is likely that a home gets repossessed if the owner is making an effort to pay the mortgage and actually engages with the lender and turns up in court when required?

I think people can make up their own minds what the chances of playing ball and getting repossessed.

As we can see from your efforts to ride around the issue at hand instead of properly refute the claim, you havent even convinced yourself of your position :)

Ill leave it at that.

You are not getting it at all are you and still not even reading the full text of your own article. If you wont answer anything else about out, tell me one thing. Was there anything else special about the people who repossession orders were granted against? Maybe the fact they didnt even turn up to court. So clearly they werent engaging. At fist I was very surprised you missed that in the article you posted, but refused to read. But why should I be surprised. You arent interested in the actual situation. You just want so badly to be right and it kills you when you arent.

Here i'll quote it for you so you cant ignore it.

"The key component of both of these was the person wasn’t present in the court,” he said.

or what about this part you missed too.

"However, in 2021, 80% of the repossession proceedings resolved did not result in a possession order." 20% probably made no attempt to engage or even turn up in court.

Its basically a shock article you posted. Nobody oweing just €11k on their mortgage gets repossessed unless they have been very, very bad wouldnt you say? How can you read that and think

Lets just agree to disagree.

I can do that and you can do that.

Im sure the vast majority of people reading the thread can look up themselves how likely it is that they'll

He qualified that statement in a subsequent post...

...but what any of this has to do with the OP is anyone's guess...as per usual some posters would rather try and score points rather than address the OP.

I agree.

Recently sold a house, asking 950

When it got to a million, we said okay.

EA said I think there is more in it: it stopped at 1.150

I then went and offered the ask on a smaller gaff, showed the EA the bank balance, went sale agreed that afternoon.

I made it clear this was a one time offer

Set a limit and offer it and then leave it at that