The other bidder

No law at all I am afraid. Estate agents are a law onto themselves.

"Back in the day"......

This still happens...

While I'm sure fake bids from estate agents happen from time to time, it's nowhere near as common as people seem to assume. Estate agent commissions are usually about 1%-2% of the sale price, so inventing a fake bidder to raise the price of a property even by, say, €20k might net the agent another few hundred euro in gross profit at most, at the risk of torpedoing the sale entirely and having to start all over looking for another buyer (or possibly even annoying the seller enough that they decide to drop their useless agent entirely). Accepting the real bid and getting the sale completed as quickly as possible so they get their commission fee and can focus their time and effort on their next sale is going to make them a lot more money in the long run. I'd say it's far more common for genuine bidders to end up in over their head in a bidding war and be unable to actually secure enough financing to match their overly optimistic bids, or to be bidding on multiple properties at once because of the current state of the market and therefore back out of the rest if they do manage to secure one.

Honestly, if there's anyone submitting fake bids, it's probably more likely to be the seller behind it than the estate agent, as they'd have a lot more to gain if they can drive the price up a fair bit.

I don't really get why people get so involved with EA's

My interactions have been pretty much all the same.

Here's the bid. Don't come back to me unless it seals the deal and move on.

Estate agents make money on volume of sales, rather than on maximising sale price. While an agent does have an interest in maximising the sale price, that's not to get more revenue from the sale; it's to gratify his client, the seller, who has a much greater interest in maximising the sale price, since he gets most of it. What the agent wants is for th seller to recommend him to others, so that he'll get another sale.

Homeowners in general have the strongest incentive to maximise house prices, for obvious reason.

Estate agents have some interest in maximising house prices, but far and away their strongest interest is in maximising volume of sales — they want people to buy and sell houses a lot. If the market is seen to be overpriced, volume of transactions tends to drop — people are cautious about buying into an overpriced market — and that's disastrous for estate agents, because the commission on the sale that never happens is 0%.

There's huge pent-up demand for housing in Ireland which is not being met because housing is so expensive - many people who wish to buy a house are not in the market because they cannot afford it. This goes for people who want a first home and for people who want a larger home to accommodate a growing family. If house prices did come down and that resulted in more purchasers entering the market and more homes being constructed/sold to meet that demand, the estate agency trade would probably earn more revenue, not less. But existing homeowners would be mightily pissed off.

I can't imagine that approach has much success when there's usually 3 or 4 bidders minimum on most properties these days.

Unless you're going in with your largest offer immediately which isn't a sensible strategy.

I know EA's are working for the seller and not the buyer but always better to have a decent rapport with them as it could work in your favour and you'll be dealing with them throughout the sale process.

Its been explained to you in fairly simple yet comprehensive terms by a couple of posters above.

There's no evidence to know this is what's really happening though.

Sure it seems like it, but there's a bit of confirmation bias going on your own side here too as you think it's happening therefore look for reasons to validate that opinion.

For all you know, the stream of other bids was a buyer who was bidding against you and on another house simultaneously. They might have preferred the other house and won the bidding war on that one, so withdrew from your one.

I'd say I've bid on at least 100 properties in the last 10 years and the one take home I can tell you from that is there really is absolutely no way to work out what is happening in the background at all. You can make a lot of assumptions based on what the EA is coming back to you with, but it's all guess work that's really not based on anything.

To add to that, an EA's prerogative is to close the sale as quickly as possible for as much as possible.

It's not within their interest to be trying to milk a few final shillings out of a sale via fake bids. They want to close the sale to focus on another one asap.

I was selling a house years ago and the EA basically was trying to go from listing it online to selling within 7 days. Thought it was some nice quick easy money for herself.

She came back with an offer of X, told me 'that's all we're getting, go sale agreed' - it was under what I wanted to sell it for and said no. She started raging at me, saying I was crazy and I was going to lose the sale.

Told her to go back to the buyer to say X was my minimum and low and behold, a week later, that's what I had.

No fake bid/milking on her side at all, just close ASAP.

Oh the freakin' lies the Estate agents tell.

"You are bidding against a doctor in the hospital". Most doctors are on 2 year short term contracts and no doctor would ever live in the house I live in.

"You cant bid on more than one house at a time, its in the rules"

"You cant pull out now. All the other parties are in a chain".

"Convayence can take a long time possibly three or four months". The seller had nowhere fixed to go to." Dreamers.

"You cant have your deposit because the unsigned contracts were never returned" the estate agent wanted to keep the e5k deposit.

The lies an EA will tell you. You cant report them to anyone because they all went to the same schools and have the same old uncles and cousins regulating it.

TThey must find "cheap Irish homes" a hoot. Cattle sheds and hovels under €200k that only need another €100k investment. The black mould eating up the walls and the roof praying a storm doesnt carry the twole thing off to Kansas. You see people on the show but never actually putting money down.

It is hard to prove, but there is a suspicion that this practice of fake bids is widespread enough.

"or to be bidding on multiple properties at once" - this is perfectly normal, acceptable behaviour.

"You cant bid on more than one house at a time, its in the rules"

• Yeah I've heard that one once or twice.

The author of Freakanomics showed that, at least in America, EA generally sold as early as possible in the interests of cash flow, and this generally meant they sold below the potential maximum sale price. All the hard work is done up front and they want to see the quickest return possible on their effort - no income from waiting months to get the maximum possible price.

Not sure if that maps to here. From that description seems like a small operation mainly 1 person. I doubt if the larger agencies here would have same concern.

I think the whole concept of "cheap Irish homes" is to not go through the bids / offers charade at the end which other property shows do.

It's just to show people the kind of property that's out the there.

I have personal experience of trying to buy a house from a cowboy of an Estate Agent skirting the rules. The whole process stunk and there was massive suspicion of fake bids to drive up my own bid price.

I cannot prove it of course, but the guy was a chancer.

This is the same estate agent who told me that he would not allow an engineer of MY choice to inspect the property.

I walked away from the property anyway.

Low and behold, the property was sold for 30k less mere weeks later.

This is the same estate agent who told me that he would not allow an engineer of MY choice to inspect the property.

This is absolutely standard practice, the buyer is only ever allowed do an inspection after they go sale agreed.

My mental maths in old age, Jesus. 2% of 3K is 60 euro. Even the dodgiest estate agent is not lying for €20 per each extra €1k extracted. It doesn’t make sense.

So if the 'other bidder', who was the highest bidder drops out, are you well within your rights to reduce your bid?

I once gave an EA my final offer as a take it or leave it. When the other bidder had a higher offer, I said, that I was dropping out. Lo and behold, next day the EA returns saying that the other bidder had dropped out and the vendor will now accept my offer. Told him where to go….

This wouldn't surprise me at all.

A (now dead) neighbour of mine bragged about getting a friend of theirs to fake bid on their house when they were selling it, to push the price up.

Probably about 15 years ago, though.

But it could have been. It does happen.

I was blessed when I bought my house, I was very lucky to find myself working with a great EA who did everything in his power to get the house for me when stumbling blocks were hit during the process. He worked his ass off.

I believe he runs his own letting agency now.

God as my witness, it was a local auctioneer in Mullingar. It was one of the two local firms that have the same surname. The delusions of grandeur in the profession is unreal.

We got mortgage approval with an expiry of 6 months and lost on a few bids and the 6 months expired. Broker said not to bother going to the hassle of renewing and use the expired approval . He would write a letter of "Support" if we needed it for an EA which we didnt.

We bought over a year after the expiry after a few more bidding wars. We needed to show the approval each time but the issue of Date of approval never came up.

.

So if you were selling a house and had a mate or acquaintance who had mortgage approval in the previous say 5 years, you could very easily ask them to stick in a few bids on the house to push it up.

I've had a bid not accepted with no other interested party. I told the auctioneer I wasn't prepared to bid against myself and he said you're probably right.