I viewed a house last Saturday, about 5 interested parties turned up to the first open viewing.
As I viewed(during 2nd time on tour of the house to get another look;)), I overheard(out of sight but not out of ear) a bloke immediately submit a bid towards the agent. It just occurred to me, is this man either foolish or desperate to bid so sudden? No-one else who viewed bidded as far as i know, they each mumbled amongst themselves about issues.
He bid about 5k under the asking, could he not wait a bit even till the first working day before bidding?! There are other houses in the neighbourhood at about the asking price to view so just wondering, what motives could there be. House in North Dub by the way not the famous SCD
could be the seller/seller’s friend/ea’s plant/in love with the house/desperate to ‘get a foot on the ladder’, I’d be quite suspicious of it though, particularly considering there are similar properties in the price range nearby…
Pfffft … only one bid at the viewing? Definitely not SCD.
Have witnessed several cases this year of people putting a bid in to the EA at open viewings. The record was five bids in a half hour open viewing at an ex-council house in an ordinary south Dublin suburb. IIRC, bids ranged from 165k to 185k on an asking of 170k. All gave the impression of being thirty-somethings looking for a family home. One bidder, after being informed there was more than one other interested party, asked the EA would they take the house off the market there and then if he threw in another 5k, bless him! That kind of thing would suggest to me that there is a degree of desperation and/or naivety involved in some of these cases. I would not at all rule out that the first such bid is indeed from a plant and designed to encourage others to get their skates on. Another possibility is that the bidder is genuine and trying to intimidate other viewers with bravado - several of the bidders I’ve witnessed weren’t remotely attempting to keep their voice down.
Incidentally, when I made my own call to the EA a few days later about the above example property, I was told bidding was at 230k or 240k with three bidders still in the hunt. I would have snapped the place up at asking price but declined to participate in that madness. It took a while to go sale agreed and has not appeared on the register yet so no idea where it ended up.
All you will achieve is the setting a baseline for everyone to crank upwards from. Quite why you would want to do that I cannot fathom.
I cannot see any upside for the purchaser.
You could ask what price would seal the deal and bid that (although I can’t see how bidding so on the day would achieve anything since the agent would still have to run it by the vendor - who could decide a baseline has been set.
a friend couldn’t attend a first viewing somewhere, (weekday during office hours and short notice), she arranged a few days later but it transpired that someone had bid the asking on the first viewing and the vendor accepted, and would not entertain any counter offers. This place was well below my friend’s limit and she would be prepared to exceed asking if it warranted it but there was no chance, the deal was done. Admire the vendor’s integrity but more money for free? I think I’d hold out for a few more viewings and hedge my bets
Would you bid first in an auction? If so, how is this different?
Bidding “wars” are a price discovery mechanism. Someone has to kick start the process. I’d be tempted to go in with 50% of asking just to get the ball rolling.
I am not arrogant enough to think that the universe of vendors is so “wise” as to be educated by the Pin.
It could have been vendor integrity, as suggested by Homemaker. More likely, it was vendor pragmatism. When you have a solid offer, you may not want to jeopardise it by reopening the bidding. Especially if the higher bidder has any conditionality attached to the offer (e.g. mortgage approval).
@ lessor, house was priced well below equivalents albeit requiring a bit of work…seems to me they could have held out for more but as was said, a bird in the hand etc. Purchaser could have put cards on the table on condition that the property be taken off the market
This presumes there is a process to get going in the first place. There needn’t be any other serious bidders in which case hanging back would cause the tyre-kickers to dissolve away and discourage the vendor into accepting a lower ball offer.
We saw the first and sole (for a while) offer on our house pitch at a discouraging 20% below asking which was bumped shortly afterwards to 85% of asking. A second bidder came along finally and cranked it up to 90% of asking - which saw the first bidder drop out. As luck would have it, a third bidder entered before we could say ‘yes’ and a bidding war-ette saw it settle at 7% over asking.
Had the first bidder got to 90% asking before anyone else entered the fray (they had it a month to themselves) then we’d have probably settled.
One has to bid to buy. But as I say, I don’t see any benefit in leading the way.
I’m a bit confused. From the perspective of each (or any) of the bidders, how would delaying a bid have increased their chance of getting the property at a lower price?
Bidder 1. Delays 80/85% bid, now you (vendor) have less time to think about capitulating.
Bidder 2. Delays 90% bid, now you’re more likely to capitulate and sell to bidder 1.
Bidder 3. Delays entry into bidding war, loses to either 1 or 2.
With perfect information, bidder 1 should have gone in with a time-limited offer of 90%. But that’s a price issue, not a timing issue.
Agree. Similarly, my attitude was once I know enough about what the house is worth with a view to comparable houses currently on the market, and secondly I have gleaned from the EA some sort of idea about buyer expectations, and other bids on, I made a (very) formal bid at a level I was happy with (actually usually a bit below), and told EA that the vendor had a week to decide if they wanted to accept my offer and if not I might consider their counter offer. I plainly told each EA, I’m giving each house I’m interested in two weeks and then I move onto the next. That if they get a higher bidder in that period then I’m out. That I was only bidding on one house seriously at a time. That I don’t have the time to mess around for two months on each house. Of course many EA’s did not like this, but I insisted. I always offered a fair price as per the market conditions at the time, and if there was another bid on for less than I though it was worth, would go straight to the level I was happy paying. My final bid. I backed up my offer with documentation to support my representation of being able to close promptly and surely. My view was the whole bidding bullshit that goes on with Irish EA’s is not my game. It’s THEIR game. And I won’t play. The above is a strategy that ensures you can move onto the next house of interest quickly, and much less messing around. It worked for me anyway. It definitely helped that I was open to a range of location and house condition. We always had another house that really interested us to move on to. Bidding on a house over a two month time frame under the proprietorship of an EA is a mugs game imo. Keep that type of bidding to the auction room would be my view.
I used to always wait but then just got fed up wasting time - once you bid it brings out other bidders who are embarrassed to make a low offer so in the end I just figured it was as well to get the ball rolling and bid early and low. Once the EA has a number of interested parties they are often disinclined to show the property again so this can exclude some of the competition.
There are other houses in the neighbourhood at about the asking price to view so just wondering, what motives could there be. House in North Dub by the way not the famous SCD 