Can Estate Agents lie about other offers?

Leif

When I bought my house, the exchange included signing forms that committed both parties to the sale with a financial penalty on failure to complete. However, that still left the preceding period open to gazumping. In practice you don't want to be committed to the sale until you have had a survey done. In some countries there is an open bidding system, in some a sealed bid, and I think everyone has a survey done prior to bidding, or perhaps the house owner has the survey but with legal stuff to make sure it is reliable. In some countries I think the seller even has some liability for some years AFTER the sale, so they need to be honest at sale time.

*confused* wrote: »

This is what happened with my purchase last year. My final offer was accepted, then miraculously a higher one came in and I was asked to match/exceed it. I refused and 10 days later I had a call to say the higher offer had been withdrawn...

Wow. That sounds fishy.

SG27

Yes they can lie about other offers! It happened to us! We made an offer and was told that another offer had just been received through the other agent (it was listed with two) and do we want to increase. I said no and immediately phoned the other agent to "enquire" they said no offers had been received. The house was on the market for another year after, reduced to less than we offered! :rotfl: and still didnt sell! They gave up eventually. :rotfl: I wa good news for me because we were naive and hadn't had a good look at what was on offer. I now realise we would have been seriously overpaying!