Identity of other bidder?

It has been a while since I bid on a house.

But I am not sure that much has changed in practice:

How to deal with an estate agent

The Estate Agent must keep a log - so what?
They must be registered with the PRSA - so what?
And some estate agents apparently tell naive bidders that they will give them the name and phone number of the under-bidder.

Estate agents will mislead potential buyers and potential buyers will mislead estate agents.

I find it very difficult to understand how anyone, sorry any two people, could believe an estate agent when he said he would disclose the identity of the under-bidder to them. On reflection, I could believe that an estate agent said it, but how could you possibly have believed it?

Brendan
 
Hi Logo

Your friend could email the estate agent along the following lines:

Dear estate agent
In our conversation on 20th June you informed me that if I were successful in making the highest bid, you would give me the name and phone number of the underbidder. You now say that you will not give me this until the contract is signed. Please confirm that when the signed contracts are returned to you, you will give me that information within 7 days.
YS.

Of course, there is a risk that the estate agent will not want to deal with your friend and may look for another buyer to gazump them.

But the reply would be very interesting to all of us. And if he replies confirming that he will, then you can probably complain him to the PSRA. However, he will probably have already arranged for a friend to be the under-bidder and they will have given their consent to pass on their phone number.

Brendan
 
So much energy for naught.

It matters not one whit if there is a ghost bidder or not. The estate agent must sell at the highest price he can get.

And if I were the vendor and your friend pulled a stunt of reverting to an earlier bid after agreeing a price I’d refuse to sell to her.
 
Actually so-called Ghost-Bidders do matter in a very real, significant, disturbing and lasting way.

I can think of no other time in my past or future life where I would be just needlessly throwing away an extra €30k-€50k+ to purchase something.

An Estate Agent at the time was conjuring up mystery investors from North America who I had to then outbid.

The property was good value and so bidding up to a certain point would still have made sense.... But obviously if this mysterious additional Bidder was a fabrication then its clearly fraud?

Is fraud ok? Do we accept it in Auctioneering as a fact of life? Does it not matter a "whit" as casually and dismissively mentioned above?

I think the buyer mentioned in the OP had their heart set on this house for a variety of valid reasons & was happy to pay what they thought was a fair market price for it. Now certain events have led to the credibility of the Auctioneer being in doubt and so they are wondering are they paying well over the odds for this house for the next 25 years.... And yes they very well may be.....
 
Nobody is forcing the OP or any other bidder to bid higher. It's their choice. I think way too many people are imagining all kinds of underhandedness with zero proof. Bid what you can afford and what you think will get you the house and bid no more than that. If you get it be happy you did and forget about anything else.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Hi Logo

Your friend could email the estate agent along the following lines:

Dear estate agent
In our conversation on 20th June you informed me that if I were successful in making the highest bid, you would give me the name and phone number of the underbidder. You now say that you will not give me this until the contract is signed. Please confirm that when the signed contracts are returned to you, you will give me that information within 7 days.
YS.

Of course, there is a risk that the estate agent will not want to deal with your friend and may look for another buyer to gazump them.

But the reply would be very interesting to all of us. And if he replies confirming that he will, then you can probably complain him to the PSRA. However, he will probably have already arranged for a friend to be the under-bidder and they will have given their consent to pass on their phone number.

Brendan
Click to expand...


You know there won't be a reply Brendan. They'll make a phone call but won't send emails as it leaves a paper trail. Someone mentioned that to me a few months ago. Have been dealing with an estate agent recently myself and the emails are all one way. I send him an email, he phones me back.
 
Bronte said:
Nobody is forcing the OP or any other bidder to bid higher. It's their choice. I think way too many people are imagining all kinds of underhandedness with zero proof. Bid what you can afford and what you think will get you the house and bid no more than that. If you get it be happy you did and forget about anything else.
Click to expand...

As I've said earlier, I think the OP and friend were naive to believe that an auctioneer would disclose the identity of another bidder and such a practice would be wrong for many reasons.

But I don't think that you can simply say "Bid what you can afford and what you think will get you the house and bid no more than that." A house does not have a precise, fixed valuation. At a given point in time, it has a range of reasonable values. What price it sells at is determined by the price that someone is willing to pay for it. If I wanted to buy a house and went around making a single bid on a house that I wanted using your strict method, I would never end up buying in the current competitive market. There is a game involved, which can involve outsmarting and outbidding someone else who wants to buy the house. And if one party is cheating in the game, it can be very costly for the honest player.
 
There is no way the EA can write anything about the identity of the other bidder. Nor should he have stated he would reveal it. I'd be raging as a bidder that my name would be disclosed to anybody.
 
LDFerguson said:
But I don't think that you can simply say "Bid what you can afford and what you think will get you the house and bid no more than that." A house does not have a precise, fixed valuation. At a given point in time, it has a range of reasonable values. What price it sells at is determined by the price that someone is willing to pay for it. If I wanted to buy a house and went around making a single bid on a house that I wanted using your strict method, I would never end up buying in the current competitive market. There is a game involved, which can involve outsmarting and outbidding someone else who wants to buy the house. And if one party is cheating in the game, it can be very costly for the honest player.
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LD of course I meant that you'd bid up to the max you thought originally was your value and your affordability. You never start with your final bid, sorry if that was not clear. But you have to be willing to walk away.

Let's look at this another way. How many of us have walked away and wondered, well now with the property website we can easily verify that the so called phantom bidder did exist and did outbid us.
 
Bronte said:
You never start with your final bid, sorry if that was not clear
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I have done this twice and in both cases got the sale agreed purely by blowing the rest out of the water. The one I didn't end up buying came back with a higher bid immediately and then pestered me for a few days on the lines of 'is that your final offer'. After a week they decided because I was a cash buyer that they choose me. Unfortunately for them the first place contracts were pretty much done so I pulled out. I cheked the register and the place was sold for an extra few grand than I had offered a few months later. It's always worth bearing in mind that EA's may want to get it done and dusted quickly.
 
From 2014:
Black Sheep said:
Just listening to Gavin Jennings interview with an EA on RTE. EA states that under PRSA rules all bids must be recorded and available for inspection.

Just wondered how often (if) those inspections are actually carried out?
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When bidding for a property is there an interest in transparency and accountability? I've heard that value of a house depends on what it's worth to the buyer. The same question could be asked of how hungry is someone who is buying bread. Very often the less hungry can afford to put in a low bid and speculate while those less lucky need to play the EA game. Meanwhile we seem to have more homeless statistics today.
Does anyone know if bids are now recorded and how are they available for inspection in the 2018 market?

Based on recent experience, a friend put a bid on a house but was out-bid several times by an unknown bidder. She eventually stopped at a point that was her available mortgage limit. IMHO this does not reflect the true value of the property. I reckon she paid well over the actual value and never found out if the counter-bidder existed. This costly exercise seems to only benefit the EA and the seller.
 
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Has anybody tried the PSR investigation process? My understanding is that they request the bid book and then contact each bidder to confirm that they placed a bid.

I'm considering initiating a investigation on a house I bought 18 months ago in a quite market outside of Dublin. I had agreed to pay the asking price as I wanted the house and none of the other bidders were willing to pay it. Then just as we were about to go sale agreed another bidder came in with a extra 10k bid. The estate agent said he would split the difference as the higher bidder had a house to sell and they wanted to sell the house quickly. I always question wheather the other bidder existed!
 
KCRMoney said:
Has anybody tried the PSR investigation process? My understanding is that they request the bid book and then contact each bidder to confirm that they placed a bid.

I'm considering initiating a investigation on a house I bought 18 months ago in a quite market outside of Dublin. I had agreed to pay the asking price as I wanted the house and none of the other bidders were willing to pay it. Then just as we were about to go sale agreed another bidder came in with a extra 10k bid. The estate agent said he would split the difference as the higher bidder had a house to sell and they wanted to sell the house quickly. I always question wheather the other bidder existed!
Click to expand...

What would happen if an EA was found to have made up a bidder during a PSR investigation?
 
They’d get struck off the...oh yeah, they’re unregulated and mainly chancers, so nothing would happen. No buyer should believe the Lord’s Prayer from the mouth of an estate agent.
 
This thread seems to assume that the price of the house is determined solely by the bidders.

If I am selling my house and I will not accept less than €300k and someone offers €250k, does it really matter if the estate agent falsely says that they have a bid of €270k? I am not going to sell it for less than €300k, so the phantom bidder doesn't matter.

In art auctions, it's perfectly legal for auctioneers to take bids off the wall to bid the item up to its reserve price. I used to think that this was disgraceful practice but I now see that it's a practical solution. If a painting has a reserve price of €5,000 and there is only one bidder at €4,000, the auctioneer has nothing to lose by taking a bit off the wall of €4,500. If the only bidder decides not to bid any further, then the item will be withdrawn. If they bid the required €5,000, then they will get the piece.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
They’d get struck off the...oh yeah, they’re unregulated and mainly chancers, so nothing would happen. No buyer should believe the Lord’s Prayer from the mouth of an estate agent.
Click to expand...

While a buyer should trust an estate agent about as much as they do the proverbial used car salesman, agents are regulated by the PSRA.

As covered earlier in the thread, an agent found to have invented a bid book or committed another offence under the Property Services legislation can be hit with a fine, lose their license, or even face jail time for more serious infractions.

Having said that, the PSRA only list a single major conviction on their site which resulted in a €25k fine for the mismanagement of booking deposits.
 
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