Bids

Bepolite

When making an offer on a property how genuine are the other offers? Do agents take the mickey and try and jack up the price by saying there is X bid in? Is there anyway to check if a bid is genuine?

Obviously you may just get a situation where the owner is not willing to accept the figure offered and I'm seeing that sometimes the asking is just there to drum up interest, the owner is not actually willing to accept it.

Is it the done thing to put an offer in based on X closing date?

Any guidance is most welcome. I've been speaking to a couple of agents offices recently and they seem to be rather forthcoming with information oddly. One told me that an offer of a certain amount had been withdrawn and another had told me they only had offers quite a bit under asking. Is there something keeping them honest?

L1011

Yes, agents make up bids. There's no way to tell for certain other than just play hard with a closing date, or if you really think they're taking the piss, a reducing offer (e.g. 200k by Friday, 180k after king of thing).

The new regulatory regime may have scared a few more in to being honest than before, possibly.

D3PO

you can never be 100% sure if a bid is genuine or not. You need to stick to your guns though. If X is what your willing to offer then offer x as your max and if they try and get more weather the other bid is legitimate or not just walk away.

certainly no harm putting a time limit on your offer but of course that's going to depend on the circumstances. Doing so in a popular Dublin suberb is likely to fall flat on its arse doing it on a rural property in a slow to non existant housing market will probably have a desired effect. Its a judgement call your side tbh.

P. Breathnach

It depends on the EA. I think some of them are fairly honest in what they tell you, but others are quite happy to invent bids. You have no way of knowing for sure. But if you have your own experience of buying and selling, you might be good at reading people.

I had a novel experience recently. I made an enquiry about a property that has been on the market for a few weeks. It looks like a desirable property, and the asking price is slightly optimistic, but not totally unreasonable. The agent told me that there were no bids on it. That same agent had told me of the bidding position on a different property, so it suggests to me that I can believe what he said about that property.