Bidding

DUBLINIRL

Any advice from when you found yourself bidding against an unknown person for a house? Just keep quickly putting in the next increment until you hit your limit or do you have another approach?

antodeco

There is no definite approach that works unfortunately. I found that when I slowed down my bidding, the estate agent starting chasing me (once I had started showing interest)

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058368883/bidding

take your time , make it sound like every live hike is hard and you are going to family to top up the mortgage

Kurooi

I've heard of people sporting and praising both approaches, trying to go in small bleeding increments, or going in larger increments to supposedly scare off the other bidder. Nobody really knows what works best.

What I can tell you is that you do NOT want a fire sale. You start putting in 3-5 bids on the same day your EA starts calling you to tell you about the other bids with a big grin across their stupid face, absolutely do not do that. Increment size and scare off tactics don't appeal anymore when you've riled everyone up and got them into a mood for contest. You want this bidding process to be as dead boring as possible.

extra-ordinary_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058368883/bidding

You hopefully may never reach your limit. Also, if the other party has a bigger budget than you then there's not a lot you can do.

DUBLINIRL

I was thinking to slow down the bidding so that the other party might not get as emotional and bid over their budget if they had a couple of more days to consider rather than turning things into an auction where as Kuroii said above some people might find themselves getting competitive.

The flip side is that if they think each increment might be our last they will think about going one more time if they think we're really stretching and having to think hard about putting in that next bid.

I'm probably overthinking it.

DataDude

I view it differently to most so far. The psychology of the other person can’t really be known and I think it’s best not to over think it. In all likelihood they have a figure in their mind (as I’m sure you do) and will get to it whether it’s slow/fast, big/small increments.

The only thing you can control to a degree is the pace at which things conclude. In that regard, fast is better as it reduces the window for which a third party might become interested. You can be absolutely sure while you and this other person are bidding, the EA is furiously trying to find other bidders. Slow is good for him/her. Every day that passes there’s potentially another couple who just got mortgage approval with a slightly bigger budget than you.

The current bidder is there. Nothing you can do about it. You can try to reduce potential future competition by wrapping things up quickly.

DUBLINIRL

Actually Datadude that is a great point that dragging it out longer than necessary keeps the door open for another bidder. That's the biggest risk of all the considerations.