Best & Final Offer - does this seem odd ?

mi-key

Just heard fromt he agent on a house we have put a couple of offers on.

Asking price is £180K, we went up to £172,500 and after a couple of days the seller eventually got back to the agent to reject it. ( We do know the house previously 'sold' for £175K but the chain collapsed ).

There is another couple interested, who had put in an offer, but not as high as ours, and I think the seller may have been waiting to see if they upped theres as they were 'thinking about' our one of £172.5

The agent says they want to go to best and final offers, which seems odd on a place that isnt having offers over the asking price, and only two people interested.

Rang the agent back and said, can we assume then that the seller is agreeing to accept whatever best and final offer is given, regardless of what it is ? - otherwise if they are going to reject it if its not what they want, then the whole exercise is pretty pointless. Agent wasnt sure, so it could all be a complete waste of time.

Turns out it isnt best and final offers - what the agent wants is for the other couple to give an offer beating our 172.5, then they will let us know what it is and we have a chance to offer more, then they will go back to the other buyer straight away and see if they want to bid more and so on...

Once one couple had reached their limit or decide to pull out, the agent will then give the highest offer to the seller.

Cant say I'm too happy about this as all it will do is drive up the price either person ends up paying. I dont know if this is the agents own idea, or the sellers, but it does seem like a BS way of doing it, especially as we dont even know if the final offer will be accepted - it could well work out that its only a few hundred more than our current rejected offer, especially as it seems the other couple are struggling to pay more than they have offered already.

Also, as the other buyers dont know what our current rejected offer is, its quite possible their new offer will be less than the £172.5 ( which beat their previous offer by a fair bit - the agent let slip they had only just beaten our initial offer of £170K ) so we could just offer £172,501 and still have the highest offer on the table.

Anyone else had experience of agents doing this to them ?

Jorgan_2

The agent has to, by law, put forward all offers put to him/her, unless the seller has advised them, in writing, that they won't accept any offer below a set price.

This does seem an odd way for the agent to go about getting offers, best & final offers is usually the best way in these cases, the property has received multiple offers. Are you in a proceedable position, do you know anything about the others buyers position?

You could tell the agent that under the data protection act you do not want your offer disclosed to anybody other than the the seller.

mi-key

This is something I wondered about - the way the agent is doing it, is they arent passing on any offers to the seller until we both put in our best offers.

According the EA the other couple are also FTB's and are ready to move, so we dont have any advantage there ( other than being able to easily afford to outbid the other buyers from the sound of it, but the house is only worth so much to us as it needs completely renovating ).

The property has only had 3 offers, from 2 buyers ( us and the others ) - had they had loads of offers, or offers over the asking price I could understand sealed bids.

As far as I know the seller hasnt advised the agent they have a minimum price - its a probate sale so they are just trying to get as much as they can.

I do have a suspicion that the other buyers may not exist, and the agent is mucking us around trying to get us to match the price it sold for last time, but obviously without any proof it would be dangerous to rely on this.

I do have it in mind to just increase our offers by £1 at a time to beat the other buyers if this is the way the agent wants to play it ;0)

Jorgan_2

Clarify with the EA if the offers are to be put forward to the seller & within what timescale. Under the Undesirable Practices Order 1991, linked to the 1979 Estate Agents Act, all offers have to be forwarded to the seller as soon as possible, usually within 24 hours, unless the seller has advised the agent about not going under a certain figure.

You need to try & offer a figure you are happy to go to & crucially the seller will accept. Ask the EA to send you a copy of the offer letter they have sent to the seller, or at least confirm that they have received your offer and it has been put to the vendor & what the outcome of that is.

Chick

I was in this situation last year when I was trying to successfully offer for my flat (I got it in the end).
I offered 92% of the original asking price, the sellers were umming & ahhing about whether or not to accept.
The EA contacted me to ask if I would go up by another 5k (97% of asking price) & the sellers would throw in some blinds/curtains/furniture...I declined.

Then I got a call saying there was another potential buyer & it was going to 'best & final offers'. Obviously the EA couldn't disclose the amount the others had bid, so...I just put in the same offer again & it got accepted.
I thought there was no point going up as I had no real parameters to work within i.e. a clue of what the others were bidding, plus, financially I didn't really want to go much further.

I didn't see the point of going upwards, also I was a FTB & although I was really taken with the property I was still looking at others & was quite naive to the whole thing. Luckily it worked out ok...

Looking back, I cynically just presumed the EA was probably making up the other buyer, hence I didn't want to budge on my original offer.

Hope this is some help, although I experienced 'best & final offers', I don't really know a great deal about it.
Chick

mi-key

Thanks for that Chick - it all seems a bit weird and vague to me as well.

The seller did consider our last offer for 2 days before getting back to the agent to reject it, so they obviously werent that definite about not accepting it.

We do have a set figure that is the maximum we think it is worth to us, and dont intend to go over this, but wouldnt want to think we are losing the house for the sake of not offering an extra £250 or £500 ( which I assume is what the EA relies on if they are inventing other buyers ! ).

They are supposed to be doing all this tomorrow, so we'll have to wait and see what offer these other buyers come up with !

wisbech_lad

Put in a lower offer (so 172,000 quid) to stop them dicking around

Dan29

Offer the maximum you want to pay, move into the house and get on with your lives

mi-key

Dan29 - fine in theory, but say the max we want to pay is £176K, and the other person only offers £172,750 - we would have wasted £3K for no reason if we just offered £176K straight away.

ic198

A friend and I were interested in buying a house in southampton and had as imilar situation to yours arise. A couple were bidding against us and the agent said to me that she wanted "our final, maximum offer, which you wouldn't go a penny higher" or words to that effect. It all smelt a bit dodgy to us- the house had been on the market a month and suddenly two offers came in on the same day?! Anyway, we decided not to play the game and stuck with our original offer- and we didn't get the house. In our case we had been warned that we were the lower bidding party, but we didn't know whether to believe there was another buyer- we really didn't like/trust the agent!

In a way I agree with Dan29- if it is the house for you, and it is unique (no others like it in the area) and you'd really regret not getting it, up your offer. If you can afford to lose the house, stand your ground.

Finally, I doubt there is any such thing as a 'final offer' as far as EAs are concerned- If you do get outbid, I'll bet they'll always listen to a higher offer!

mi-key

This is the whole point - it isnt even final offers - fair enough if we both had the chance to put in just one offer each, and had to make it our best ( like you would get with sealed bids ) then I could see the point.

The EA wants to play us off against each other to keep pushing up the price to get the maximum.

Odd thing is though, the other couple still havent put in their offer with the agent yet ( at 10.45 am ) - I would have thought if they were that keen they would have dont it first thing. Also, after we put in a higher offer than them, the agent told them, then they did nothing for two days until the agent phoned them and asked them if they wanted to put another offer in.

As much as anything now its the prinicipal of it - we know what the house sold for 2 weeks ago, but thats irrelevant as the chain collapsed and no sale was made ( and it had been on the market for 2 months before that and not sold ). And there didnt seem to be a backup buyer who had just been outbid to buy it, otherwise the agent would have gone to them first.

Our last offer was 98% of what it 'sold' for before - the seller rejected it and then all of a sudden theres another buyer interested and the agent comes up with this final offer idea ? If the seller just turned around and said 'I'll accept X amount for it' then we could say yes or no.