Conflict of interest?

It used to be more common that owners sold their own property without using an EA. Is there an issue that this seller happens to be an auctioneer? Maybe the property services regulator could advise on that.

If he is not acting in a professional capacity with all the regulations that entails then you are giving financial information to a private individual. Could your solicitor send the proof of funds to his solicitor?

as it is their on house they are selling and they have no client do they have the same obligations as an estate agent selling on behalf of a client?

There have been news articles in the last few months about the fact this goes against GDPR.

Only give redacted AIP or a solicitor/broker letter confirming you have sufficient funds.

Ha yes 😕

If it is a condition of the bid, and the sellers has other bidders, failure to provide POF’s just means you are out of the bidding. I think consideration of all bids should be contingent on the bidder being able to show they actually have the funds to support it. This also prevents other bidders having to pay more as a result of time wasters pushing the price up by bidding more than they can pay.

All I'm saying is you can stand up to the estate agent if they're being unreasonable and asking for your accounts is just that, it might mean they will reject your bid but it doesn't have to. You don't have to be out of the bidding in fact make it clear that your bid is still on offer and if they throw 'conditions' reiterate it still - it is a bid, forward it to your client and let them decide. And make sure to email your bid to the general inbox of the estate agent so their colleagues have it too. The EA has to let the seller know of any bids and it will make them look extremelly bad to say 'there is a bid 5k higher, but I elected to say no to that and cost you that money because I didn't get documents off the bidder'.

Idk, if I was the seller I'd consider that EA incompetent, were their soft skills lacking or are they not bothered to push the bidder? Surely they do this because it's my money and not his being tossed. EAs know this and they know how easy it is for the client to just go next door and find someone that can close the sale.

As a seller, why would you accept a bid from someone who told the EA to piss off when asked for proof that they have funds to support their bid?

Personally, I think the EA would not be doing their job if they weren’t checking that the bids were genuine and the bidder had the funds for whatever amount they were bidding.

I have bid on many houses this year (roughly 15) and none asked for bank statements or anything like that. All asked for some proof of funds, but a redacted mortgage approval in principle sufficed in all cases. Only reason I could see for requesting statements would be if you were buying in cash.

But if you are giving a redacted mortgage approval letter, they wouldn't know the split. I agree it's normal to request some kind of proof of funds, just that asking for actual bank statements is further than normal.

...

Does a redacted mortgage approval prove you have funds to support a bid?

A lot of EAs/sellers will not accept bids from people who need to sell a property to finance the purchase for that very reason, along with the delay selling can cause.

RE how they would deal with the existing house that you are selling and how you would use that for proof of funds, I honestly don't know.

RE giving proof of funds without showing your hand when you actually have more available than you are bidding, then it is just a matter of putting some kind of buffer between you and your estate agent rather than just giving the Estate Agent access to raw documents/facts. So, for example, you go to your solicitor and give them your proof of funds (bank statements/mortgage approval/whatever) and they write out a quick letter saying, "To whom it concerns, I can confirm that BnA has has funds available up to €xxxk to support a bit on a house" where €xxxk is the amount you are bidding as opposed to the total amount you have available. (I am sure they would write it a lot better than I would).

Obviously, the disadvantage here is that you will have to go and get a new letter every time you increase your bid (and possibly have to pay for it).

In my case, I was getting funds from 2 different places. I gave the EA the full amount of one and I got a letter from the bank confirming that I had access to the remaining amount required without actually saying what the total amount I had in savings was. In my case (because I'm lazy) I actually got a letter to cover €10k more than my bid so I wouldn't have to go back to the bank for every single bid.

When I first started, I didn't think they would accept it redacted either, as you can theoretically have approval for a way smaller amount and they wouldn't know, but from experience, they don't care. I think all they want is some show of seriousness. If you've gone to the effort of getting mortgage approval then you're probably at least seriously trying to buy and are not just a complete tyre kicker. If you have approval for €200k though, there just isn't much reason to waste your own time putting in bids at €400k on a house, so they presumably don't see that very often. In our case, the agent did ask for detailed proof of funds to go to sale agreed, but that was after accepting the offer and negotiatons were done.

I'm not advocating manipulating documents by any means, but in this case, the documents you'd be theoretically manipulating to show to an agent are not legally binding in any way, so if someone was determined to just waste time with phoney bids, it would still be easy to do without really getting in trouble. They aren't like documents you give to the bank to drawdown the mortgage, if you manipulated those you'd be committing fraud. They're something you show in good faith, the same as it's expected that the bids you make are good faith amounts you could actually follow through with. A lot of the whole process is taken on trust. Even after going sale agreed, you can generally just change your mind and back out. You send a deposit, but it's refundable, because like a redacted AIP document, it's just there to indicate that you are serious about the purchase.

If you are showing both your mortgage approval, and your savings account, how are they not seeing the maximum you can afford? As far as I can see, this approach really only benefits the seller/EA, by giving them more information. I don't think there's any reason at all to believe that other timewasting bidders with no means to pay are pushing up the price just for the fun of it on this or any other property (and as I had stated before, they could really still do this if they for some reason wanted to), so the far bigger concern for the buyer is revealing exactly how much you're able to go up to to a seller.

I'm going to assume they are legally allowed to use this as a condition for even considering an offer, but the point I originally made still absolutely stands that it is an unorthodox way of selling, and I'd hope it doesn't become a trend. Savilles got into some hot water in the press over the summer for doing basically this before agreeing to viewings of their new properties, because it was seen as a step too far for selling property: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/estate-agent-seeks-proof-of-how-much-buyers-can-afford-before-viewings-1.4593311