Re: bids
Clubman – AFAIK there are no plans to remove regulation from the financial sector as there will always be a need to keep a tight leash on financial institutions to prevent/limit fraud. Deregulation in other sectors is aimed at opening the market up to competition – I’m all for that but I don’t think monitoring estate agents and their behaviour is going to restrict competition.
Rainyday – do you disagree with the notion of the system I mentioned above, or just the specific issues with how exactly it would work? I’m pretty sure in this day and age theres a way to put such a system in place, it just might require a bit of thought. How about a system whereby both buyers and sellers have to register with a central body to get setup on ‘Houses.ie’ – proof of identification is required for this, and you are then assigned an anonymous username and password.
Seller then advertises their house on ‘Houses.ie’ – they may or may not choose to consult a private estate agent for advice (though this could be an added service provided by the state run body), and they could just use their own digital camera to take photos. Representative of the state run body facilitates the viewings. Buyer places a bid using the website (or can call into one of the branches of the state body to do so). A buyer’s bidding history might be made public so that sellers can see if they have pulled out of loads of deals in the past, or if they are hedging their bets and bidding on many houses at the one time. Likewise, the buyers could see that a seller hasn’t repeatedly put houses on the market and pulled them off again. This system works quite well on eBay where sellers and buyers alike both know that a black mark against them is a major deterrent. Bidders could see the anonymous usernames of those bidding against them. State body monitors may make random checks to ensure legitimacy of bidders.
You could even copy eBay and have a system where you enter the maximum amount you are willing to pay for the property, and the system increases your bids in increments of €1,000 everytime you are outbid up until your limit has been reached. Like eBay this is open to some abuse whereby a seller could get their friends to place bids to increase the price, but I don’t think this is anymore vulnerable to such abuse as the current system whereby the agent just makes up phantom bidders – they don’t even bother with getting actual people to place false bids. Also, each person could only have one account which the state body could trace back to them.
You could also have other requirements such as a mandatory photo of every room in the house, ensuring that the seller has a structural survey done before advertising the house, and that this is placed on the website (shows the seller is serious about selling, and prevents the situation whereby the buyer bids on a house, goes sale agreed, has a survey done and then realises there is a major structural problem with the house and they have then missed out on their second choice house).
The above is just a top-of-the-head suggestion but I’m sure with more thought any problems could be ironed out and the benefits that I can see are: removal of private estate agents from the process (meaning less fees for seller to fork out, and elimination of their dodgy dealings and phantom bidders), there would be a single site where buyers could find all houses on the market (or visit one of the state bodys branches if no web access), sellers could see if the bidders have a history of pulling out of deals or are bidding on several houses at one time, there is no way for people to do dodgy cash deals for a couple of grand in excess of the stamp duty brackets (sellers identity is anonymous so cannot be contacted, though the system could provide for bids for contents of the house, this is clearly visible to all and is auditable) etc. etc.