Is that ok?

azkaban420

Sounds like a ficticious buyer has been miraculously conjured up! If you believe no such buyer exists, tell them you're not prepared to get involved in a bidding war and walk away. They will probably be calling you back and telling you the other buyer has dropped out!

If you feel there may be truth in the matter, then increase your offer accordingly...just make sure you're not bidding against yourself

I wouldn't send them any copy of an AIP either - tell them you have finances in place and don't wish to reveal them to them as they also have a vested interest in financial products...that should turn them away.

Az

sonastin

Depends how much you want this house and how strongly you believe that the other offer is fake. You could:
a) say "oh well, sorry. that's all we can afford. call us if it falls through". If there is no other offer they'll be calling you back within the week. If its not, you've lost the house.
b) test the water by telling them that you could stretch to another £2.5k. If that gets accepted there's a good chance that the other offer was fake. There's also a good chance that the other "buyer" will then increase their offer to try to push you even further. You can keep repeating this step to your walk away price or you can go to option a). There's always still the risk that there is a real buyer and you let them have it.
c) go straight to your walk away price and hope that blows any increased bids from other party out of the water. If you don't get it at your walk away price, you couldn't afford it.
or
d) because this is a pet hate of mine - ask them to cite which bit of the data protection act prevents them from telling the other offer. Because I've read the DPA and I'm pretty sure that there is nothing in there that relates to estate agents processing offers and I HATE people mis-quoting the DPA and giving it a bad name where it is not relevant. Get them to show you their registration as a data processor if the Data Protection Act applies. Or force them to admit that they're just not telling you because they don't want you to know what the other offer is. Preferably get them to admit that they can't tell you what it is because they made it up!

Sorry, got onto a bit of a rant there. 2 sure-fire ways of winding me up are to blame "data protection" or "health and safety" when they aren't applicable!

poppysarah

How long has it been for sale?
Some EA say there are offers when there may not be...

Be prepared to walk away!

K_and_N

Thanks again.

It first came onto market around october 2010. There was a sale fell though in December and it came back on the market a few weeks back.

johnthebar

This sounds similar to the situation with the house I've just had an offer accepted on.

The house had an asking price of £270k, I put in an opening offer of £240k the day after it went on the market (mid November) and was prepared to go to £250k. All of a sudden there were 3 other interested buyers with offers at £250k and one of them apparently had a 50% deposit. I was told that all interested buyers needed to speak to thier mortgage advisor to see who was the most proceedable. This felt all wrong to me and I refused to speak to the mortgage advisor or get into a bidding war (especially with myself). I thought they were trying to suss out my maximum price using some pressure tactics. I put in another offer of £245k, which was refused, and then walked away as I was annoyed with them trying to play me like this.

We kept an eye on the property and saw it wasn't sold or under offer over the last couple of months, so last week I upped my offer to £250k and it was accepted straight away without any mention of these other 'buyers'. Once the price was fixed I agreed to speak to the Mortgage Advisor to see if he could beat the rate I'd been offered, which he couldn't.

I could probably have handled that better and got the offer accepted sooner, but these tactics really annoyed me and were so transparent.

I'd echo others here and say don't let them pressure you with other buyers as they may well not exist. Don't let thier mortgage advisor suss out your maximum price, you don't need to speak to them if you don't want to. Also be prepared to walk away if you need to.

Mallotum_X

Chances are the other offer doesnt exist.

Try and call their bluff, and say that you dont want to get into a bidding war, and ask them to send you details of other properties. Chances are that the other offer will then disappear just as soon as it arrived.

Estate agents try these tricks all the time.

SambaRamba

I placed an offer on a property only to be told that 3 others had already offered the asking price. I was told to submit a best and final offer by a set time on a set date.

In the end I offered around £3,200 over the asking price, but I was told I didn't get it due to a higher offer. The next day the sold sign was up.

A recent search on a house price website states that it actually sold for £4k below the asking price!

I feel we didn't get it because we still had our own house to sell, and also, we didn't get carried away offering huge sums...maybe if we had the estate agent would have persuaded the vendor to accept...i'll never know.

The estate agent knew how much we could stretch to as we had also had a 'financial interview' by and independent solicitor...

I would listen to the advice here and not let them know anything other than the fact you have AIP, and definately ask for details of other properties as Mallotum says.

lindos90

Make sure your offer has been accepted as an actual offer by the EA, rather than them percieving it as a 'we could afford £xx,xxx'. They then have a duty to inform the vendor of the offer, whether there is a higher offer on the table or not.

If you are serious, maybe arrange a second viewing, where you can confirm if your offer has actually been passed on to the vendors.

K_and_N

The estate agent is concentrating on pushing our offer up and they are not asking about the AIP at the moment.

But an interesting thing came up. At our second viewing with the owner, we told him that we will be putting in an offer. When asked if we should be doing via the agent only, he said he doesn't mind. He was willing to negotiate price then and there but at that time we couldn't agree the offer between me & OH so we said we'll do it via the agent next day. The owner seems like a very nice person and we don't want him to think that we are time waster. So...we posted a letter to him saying the offer has been made to the estate agent at the same time as we emailed the offer to agent.

It is only afterwards that all the problems with AIP & another offer came back from agent. Then we had a call from agent late afternoon yesterday saying the owner has informed them that he got our letter and doesn't like to be contacted directly and he prefers we contact via agent. It is very strange that the owner didn't seem to mind when we asked. We are now thinking it could be that they didn't tell the owner about our offer at all and owner is now aware of it because of our letter.

Anyway.....last night we dicided to up our offer by £2500 and if they say "the other offer" is still higher than our new offer, we'll walk away because we will be blind bidding otherwise.

We'll keep you posted here...:)

sonastin

K_and_N wrote: »

It is only afterwards that all the problems with AIP & another offer came back from agent. Then we had a call from agent late afternoon yesterday saying the owner has informed them that he got our letter and doesn't like to be contacted directly and he prefers we contact via agent. It is very strange that the owner didn't seem to mind when we asked. We are now thinking it could be that they didn't tell the owner about our offer at all and owner is now aware of it because of our letter.

That could be EA speak for "we were playing silly b*ggers with you to try to get the offer up before we told the vendor. you've gone and spoilt that by letting the vendor know. he's just been in and tore strips off us for p*ssing around so we would prefer you kept all contact through us. we don't like it when you mess around with the rules of our game".

Not worth risking it by making contact with the vendor again just in case he has changed his mind, but at least now you know that the EA has had to tell him what the offer is! (unless their lies extend as far as denying that you've made your offer yet)