below bid

LFC Murphy

Just wondering if you can bid below current offer. I suspect that current bid is not 100% legit

RunRoryRun

You can bid whatever you want. Likely won't be entertained unless the current highest bid falls through.

Sleeper12

A good estate agent will note your bid. Sometimes a buyer pulls out & it's hand to have a backup

myshirt

Sleeper12 wrote: »

A good estate agent will note your bid. Sometimes a buyer pulls out & it's hand to have a backup

Are they not compelled to actually note the bid, rather than 'good practice'.

davo10

LFC Murphy wrote: »

Just wondering if you can bid below current offer. I suspect that current bid is not 100% legit

The presumption that bids are not legit comes up a lot on boards, could I ask why you think it is not legit?

Sleeper12

myshirt wrote:

Are they not compelled to actually note the bid, rather than 'good practice'.

That I don't know the answer to that

LFC Murphy

Just a gut feeling. Property went sale agreed in 2017 and it fell through.

Went back on to the market in Jan and got offer of asking price within 2 days. Went unchanged for four weeks. Then after an open day they got 2 bids. The first was 3k and the second was 27k. It stayed like that for a week and the 27k bidder dropped off.

When I rang the estate agent stated the vendor is looking for a "little" bit more.

I've been to a few open days and just get a sense that the bids are suspect

Anyway my question remains.... So the answer is yes, but it depends...

1641

LFC Murphy wrote: »

Anyway my question remains.... So the answer is yes, but it depends...

The answer is Yes. An under bid may sometimes succeed, eg, if the higher bid is withdrawn, the sale falls through or the Vendor prefers your bid for any reason, eg, cash offer.

The Estate Agent is acting for the Vendor to achieve the best bid - but it is for the vendor to decide what is the best offer and how much is acceptable.

Presuming it is a registered Estate Agency, then it is regulated by the Property Services Regulatory Authority and bound by its Code of Practice, which includes keeping a record of all bids. If you really believe this is being violated you can complain to the PSRA. See section 1.9of the Code here:

http://www.sherryfitz.ie/media/Code_of_Practice1.pdf

GarIT

1641 wrote: »

The answer is Yes. An under bid may sometimes succeed, eg, if the higher bid is withdrawn, the sale falls through or the Vendor prefers your bid for any reason, eg, cash offer.

The Estate Agent is acting for the Vendor to achieve the best bid - but it is for the vendor to decide what is the best offer and how much is acceptable.

Presuming it is a registered Estate Agency, then it is regulated by the Property Services Regulatory Authority and bound by its Code of Practice, which includes keeping a record of all bids. If you really believe this is being violated you can complain to the PSRA. See section 1.9of the Code here:

http://www.sherryfitz.ie/media/Code_of_Practice1.pdf

It’s very easy for an estate agent to get a friend of the seller or just use a fake name to record a bid.

1641

GarIT wrote: »

It’s very easy for an estate agent to get a friend of the seller or just use a fake name to record a bid.

Yeah ? So for, say, an extra €5000 onto the sale price the Agent earns an extra €50 in commission and risks disciplinary sanction and the reputation of the Agency ? That would be very smart.

People who lose out in a sale, or find themselves left behind in the bidding, or who bid more than they think wise, may feel upset or even disgruntled.That is understandable.

What is easy in this situation is for someone to add to it by coming up with unsubstantiated and evidence free accusations.

GarIT

1641 wrote: »

Yeah ? So for, say, an extra €5000 onto the sale price the Agent earns an extra €50 in commission and risks disciplinary sanction and the reputation of the Agency ? That would be very smart.

People who lose out in a sale, or find themselves left behind in the bidding, or who bid more than they think wise, may feel upset or even disgruntled.That is understandable.

What is easy in this situation is for someone to add to it by coming up with unsubstantiated and evidence free accusations.

You’re definitely right about people that lost out on a sale wanting to justify with something they pretty much made up.

On the other hand all the estate agent has to record is a name and a bid. If the estate agent writes down that Mohammed Smith called from a private number and made a bid of €30k above asking who can prove him wrong?

I even know an EA that will hire some friends/actors to show up to open viewings for something like €200-250 and make sure they are overheard talking about bidding over the asking price. Buying houses is a game you have to not play it and offer what you think it’s worth to you to win.

1641

GarIT wrote: »

You’re definitely right about people that lost out on a sale wanting to justify with something they pretty much made up.

On the other hand all the estate agent has to record is a name and a bid. If the estate agent writes down that Mohammed Smith called from a private number and made a bid of €30k above asking who can prove him wrong?

I even know an EA that will hire some friends/actors to show up to open viewings for something like €200-250 and make sure they are overheard talking about bidding over the asking price. Buying houses is a game you have to not play it and offer what you think it’s worth to you to win.

I doubt if a bid from this Mr Smith would stand up to much scrutiny - with absolutely no details supplied - number and/or other contact details at least and probably finance and whether in a chain, etc. In an enquiry it is "on balance of probability" and not beyond all reasonable doubt as in a criminal matter.

I doubt if there are many Mr Smiths. But if "Mr Smith" did come into play he is much more likely to a proxy for the Vendor than the EA. The Vendor has much more to gain and much less to lose.

Incidentally how do you "know" about the EA above? I assume you are not a "friend" - or an actor?

I didn't believe fake bids existed and was told by an ex EA that he had never seen one in all his time in the game.

However, I put a bid on a house in January which was substantially higher than previous bid on house, though still well short of the asking price.

EA knew I was looking at another property and was keen to business very quickly.

Two days after my offer went in, EA gets back to say underbidder has just bid at 4k over asking price and 39k more than their previous offer made five weeks earlier. Tells me a few k more would probably secure house.

I pulled out of bidding, but in hindsight I have my suspicions about legitimacy of the bid based on pattern of previous bidding and the fact that their previous bid had been five weeks earlier.

Anyway, house is still on market months later. Got a friend to enquire and latest bid is still mine. No sign of the bid that was relayed to me by EA.

I am convinced now that the bid of 4k over asking was a phantom bid.

Why would they make up a bid for the sake of the tiny bit of commission? EA probably knew family selling would not sell at under asking and was keen to get me to offer just over the last bid to get it off his hands. It had gone sale agreed a year previously but it fell through at last minute.

davo10

Sales fall through for a variety of reasons. Personally I wouldn't find anything unusual with someone bidding above asking, nor is there anything unusual with putting in a big offer to put off other bidders. The fact is that there are many reasons deals don't complete, but your guess isn't proof of anything.

In all the years of reading posts about phantom bids, I don't remember one poster ever providing proof, it's as if every bid which is above the poster's must be a phantom bid.

1641

I would guess that if the EA acted so stupidly in the this situation then they are at in in other and bigger ways. If you are convinced you should complain. But,as Davo10 says, there are other plausible explanations here.

By the way, if you withdrew your bid how is the highest bid still yours ? Or is someone else matching your previous bid?

daheff

1641 wrote: »

Yeah ? So for, say, an extra €5000 onto the sale price the Agent earns an extra €50 in commission and risks disciplinary sanction and the reputation of the Agency ?

These coments baffle me. Estate agents are generally judged on sales and prices achieved. That beings additional business...so getting the extra 5k sale price may get additional houses to sale....so not just an extra 50eur commission, but additional 5-10k of commission from other sales.

The other side of the arguement is that the seller may have told the EA they need to achieve X amount and wont complete below that...so EA may massage the bids to get there

GarIT

1641 wrote: »

I doubt if a bid from this Mr Smith would stand up to much scrutiny - with absolutely no details supplied - number and/or other contact details at least and probably finance and whether in a chain, etc. In an enquiry it is "on balance of probability" and not beyond all reasonable doubt as in a criminal matter.

I doubt if there are many Mr Smiths. But if "Mr Smith" did come into play he is much more likely to a proxy for the Vendor than the EA. The Vendor has much more to gain and much less to lose.

Incidentally how do you "know" about the EA above? I assume you are not a "friend" - or an actor?

It doesn't have to be so blatantly obvious as my example but a direct family member was talking to a solicitor while buying a house and the solicitor reconed that it was sometghing easily done with little to no risk.

He was recommended to us, this guy is unusual though, he's been known in the area to be doing dodgy deals for the last 20 years.

Deleted User wrote: »

Why would they make up a bid for the sake of the tiny bit of commission?

Most EAs are now advising to price a house at 10% less than the mimumum you will accept to draw in interest and then the EA has to (as another poster already said) massage the price up to where you want it to be.

1641

GarIT wrote: »

Most EAs are now advising to price a house at 10% less than the mimumum you will accept to draw in interest and then the EA has to (as another poster already said) massage the price up to where you want it to be.

In so far as the advertised price is deliberately set low, it is to draw in the maximum number of potential bidders in the expectation of plenty of initial bids and competing bids to push up the price, ie, "bidding war". So why, supposedly, would the EA need to be massaging the bids in this scenario?

GarIT wrote: »

He was recommended to us, this guy is unusual though, he's been known in the area to be doing dodgy deals for the last 20 years.

.

A bad egg is possible in any walk of life. But if he has such a reputation it is hardly good for business as locals would not want to deal with him (to purchase). Also, it is surprising that in 20 years no one has reported him.

GarIT

1641 wrote: »

In so far as the advertised price is deliberately set low, it is to draw in the maximum number of potential bidders in the expectation of plenty of initial bids and competing bids to push up the price, ie, "bidding war". So why, supposedly, would the EA need to be massaging the bids in this scenario?



A bad egg is possible in any walk of life. But if he has such a reputation it is hardly good for business as locals would not want to deal with him (to purchase). Also, it is surprising that in 20 years no one has reported him.

I guess if the bids the EA or seller were exoecting didn't come in they could then consider faking them in that case.

I agree on the second point. We avoided any property he was selling. It's in a large suburban area so many wouldntknow the local EAs and wouldnt know about the issues. Its hard to prove anything like that and the people that could have some evidence probably benifited from it so wouldn't report anything.

I'm not saying all EAs are bad or even the majority. I'm just saying an EAs faking bids is more plausable than some people would like to believe although potentially less common than some people claim. It's unlikely that there would have been a law brought in to prevent fake bids if they didn't happen and anyone that read the laws would see that they do little to nothing to prevent fake bids other than now having to fake a minimal paper trail to go along with the bid.

davo10

davo10 wrote: »

Sales fall through for a variety of reasons. Personally I wouldn't find anything unusual with someone bidding above asking, nor is there anything unusual with putting in a big offer to put off other bidders. The fact is that there are many reasons deals don't complete, but your guess isn't proof of anything.

In all the years of reading posts about phantom bids, I don't remember one poster ever providing proof, it's as if every bid which is above the poster's must be a phantom bid.

I often laughed at people talking about phantom bids and often thought that it was just them being sore about losing out on a property.

In my case, my bid was a shot to nothing and I wasn't bothered when it didn't get accepted as it was a big project to take on and was probably going to test our budget to its limit anyway. I'm very glad we dropped out now.

I have subsequently gotten to know the next door neighbours (I always knew them, just didn't know they lived there) and they have been able to tell us a lot about the property. The house was sale agreed over a year ago but fell through due to serious structural issues.

I asked EA about subsidence and he lied a number of times to me about the history of the property, though he was fully aware of the issues given the problems with previous sale.

He also lied to us a number of other times about some simple things. In general, I got a bad vibe off him and found him to be different to many of the other EAs I have dealt with.

Based on what I have since learned, do I think he was capable of producing a phantom bid to get us to pay what he needed to get a problem property off his hands? Absolutely.

The underbidders supposedly upped their bid by 48k a day after we put in a final bid having not reacted to our previous bid in six weeks.

I had a friend feign interest and ask about the property a few weeks later and just as I suspected the highest bid was still ours and not the one that he put to me. Did the sale of the property fall through in that short space of time or did they remove their offer? I doubt it.

In this case, I would imagine the family selling were only willing to sell for above a certain amount and he was looking to get rid of it asap as it was becoming a problem for EA and costing them money. It had little to do with commission I would imagine.

We have since got the keys to the property we ended up buying so I am not bitter or bitching, but I do believe it is naive to think that phantom bids don't happen in some situations. I doubt it's widespread but given the lack of regulation it has to happen in a very small amount of cases.

There is no hard evidence to prove it happened in this case, but by the same token there is no way of telling it hasn't either.

1641

Deleted User wrote: »

The underbidders supposedly upped their bid by 48k a day after we put in a final bid having not reacted to our previous bid in six weeks.

I had a friend feign interest and ask about the property a few weeks later and just as I suspected the highest bid was still ours and not the one that he put to me. Did the sale of the property fall through in that short space of time or did they remove their offer? I doubt it.
.

Deleted User wrote: »

Two days after my offer went in, EA gets back to say underbidder has just bid at 4k over asking price and 39k more than their previous offer made five weeks earlier. Tells me a few k more would probably secure house.

I pulled out of bidding, but in hindsight I have my suspicions about legitimacy of the bid based on pattern of previous bidding and the fact that their previous bid had been five weeks earlier.

Anyway, house is still on market months later. Got a friend to enquire and latest bid is still mine. No sign of the bid that was relayed to me by EA.

Do I take it that the above both refer to the same transaction?

Deleted User wrote: »

I doubt it's widespread but given the lack of regulation it has to happen in a very small amount of cases.
There is no hard evidence to prove it happened in this case, .

But there are regulations.You are convinced that they have been breached. This can only be investigated if you submit a complaint.
I don't know what happened - but there are other plausible explanations.
That is not to say I believe that individuals in any walk of life never break the rules.

Deleted User wrote: »

There is no hard evidence to prove it happened in this case, but by the same token there is no way of telling it hasn't either.

But there can be said about practically anything.

There is no way of telling that fairies don't visit my back garden at night when there is noone around - I'm convinced they do. There is no way of telling that the Government isn't receiving telepathic messages from aliens. Ok - this is facetious. But all we can do is look for evidence of malpractice - that the regulations have been broken. In this case, has the EA a contemporaneous record of the bids and bidders that can be traced.

1641

Deleted User wrote: »

The house was sale agreed over a year ago but fell through due to serious structural issues.

I asked EA about subsidence and he lied a number of times to me about the history of the property, though he was fully aware of the issues given the problems with previous sale.

He also lied to us a number of other times about some simple things.

There would certainly be good grounds for complaint here.Have you any evidence that can be verified, eg, either an email from the EA or an email from you to the EA outlining your understanding of the information he gave you verbally? I know it is a pain to record this stuff but it has to be done.

1641

1641 wrote: »

Do I take it that the above both refer to the same transaction?


But there are regulations.You are convinced that they have been breached. This can only be investigated if you submit a complaint.
I don't know what happened - but there are other plausible explanations.
That is not to say I believe that individuals in any walk of life never break the rules.

[/B]But there can be said about practically anything.

There is no way of telling that fairies don't visit my back garden at night when there is noone around - I'm convinced they do. There is no way of telling that the Government isn't receiving telepathic messages from aliens. Ok - this is facetious. But all we can do is look for evidence of malpractice - that the regulations have been broken. In this case, has the EA a contemporaneous record of the bids and bidders that can be traced.

Yes, same thing. It should read 39k. Worked it out in a hurry the second time.

I literally went sale agreed on another house later that evening, so while I felt uneasy about the whole thing, I was happy to move on. I knew I wouldn't do business with that EA anymore and was glad to get out of it.

I have no idea if he kept a record of all the bids. Is it possible to ask for a record of bids and bidders and then to check to see if they are all legitimate?

1641

1641 wrote: »

There would certainly be good grounds for complaint here.Have you any evidence that can be verified, eg, either an email from the EA or an email from you to the EA outlining your understanding of the information he gave you verbally? I know it is a pain to record this stuff but it has to be done.

We spoke on my first visit about structural issues and subsidence history. He gave me vague, evasive answers. I did not record anything but was on guard immediately. As I said, I have dealt with plenty of EAs and am well aware of how they operate (some good, some bad) but I was very wary of this guy.

All I got out of him was some minor work done in the early 1980s but neighbours subsequently filled me in on the subsidence issues owner had over the years.

He told us porkies about the underbidder. We knew exactly who we were bidding against as we had a builder around to view another property, who had literally just come from pricing an extension and refurb on the property in question. He also told us fibs about how he was going to treat our final bid on the house.

1641

Deleted User wrote: »

I have no idea if he kept a record of all the bids. Is it possible to ask for a record of bids and bidders and then to check to see if they are all legitimate?

He would have no obligation to reveal identifying information on other bidders to you - indeed he could not. However, his professional body (eg,IPAV - there are a number of different ones) can access and check them, as can the regulatory body (PSRA). You would have to submit a complaint to them. Your first port of call might be to the EA himself to see if it can be resolved short of a formal complaint, but I wouldn't think this is necessary.

Deleted User wrote: »

We spoke on my first visit about structural issues and subsidence history. He gave me vague, evasive answers.

All I got out of him was some minor work done in the early 1980s but neighbours subsequently filled me in on the subsidence issues owner had over the years.

He told us porkies about the underbidder. We knew exactly who we were bidding against as we had a builder around to view another property, who had literally just come from pricing an extension and refurb on the property in question. He also told us fibs about how he was going to treat our final bid on the house.

Vague, evasive answers would not be the same as telling straight porkies about structural issues - not allowed. In any event, as you have no record I think it would be difficult to advance this one.

I don't really understand the underbidder one as you have outlined it - he is not obliged (or allowed) to give you much information in this regard.

1641

1641 wrote: »

He would have no obligation to reveal identifying information on other bidders to you - indeed he could not. However, his professional body (eg,IPAV - there are a number of different ones) can access and check them, as can the regulatory body (PSRA). You would have to submit a complaint to them. Your first port of call might be to the EA himself to see if it can be resolved short of a formal complaint, but I wouldn't think this is necessary.



Vague, evasive answers would not be the same as telling straight porkies about structural issues - not allowed. In any event, as you have no record I think it would be difficult to advance this one.

I don't really understand the underbidder one as you have outlined it - he is not obliged (or allowed) to give you much information in this regard.

I have no desire to take it any further as it was ages ago. I was glad we didn't go any further than we did with house and would have caught any structural issues anyway had we decided to. We bought another house and are happy with it.

I asked him straight out if there was any structural work done on the house since the 1980s and was told there had not been, which I subsequently found out was untrue. He also told me the sale had fallen through previously due to probation which was also untrue. On top of those blatant lies, he was vague and evasive around the issue of subsidence.

With regard to the underbidder, I know EA is not obliged to tell me anything. But EAs always give you bits of info about the rivals, usually designed to get a bidding war going. Builder told me he had just seen house with a couple but there was a huge amount of work to be done and got impression he was not going to get any business. At the same time, EA is telling me underbidders are about to make an improved bid and were very keen. That's when I knew he was a spoofer.