Best and final offer approach. Good or Bad?

DAVESQUARED

The fact that they did not get the house is neither here nor there. The only reason for this post was to explore this approach to choosing a bid serves an real advantage. Certainly don't feel any guilt at all and it wasn't game playing the offer was what my son thought was reasonable and might win. It didn't and that's fine. However if it had been a more traditional bidding war then my son would have probably bid higher and may, or may not have won. So the comments about sour grapes and guilt are irrelevant as he may or may not have bought it either way.
In terms of the method arguments seem to be.-
Saves time - I agree it does but with the amount of effort that generally goes into selling a house and the time spent to actually conduct some kind of bidding war is pretty irrelevant. Kind of like taking a two short cut to save two minutes on a round the world trip.
Get's a better price for the seller - The only time this would happen would be if someone made a silly bid and from what I've read a lot of people then back out on these.
Get's a best price for the buyer - Probably not because the winner is quite likely to bid several thousand pounds over when just a thousand pounds extra would have won.

Ultimately this is the sellers decision but if I was offered this approach when selling a property I don't think I'd choose it. I suspect though that agents are pushing it because it gives them an easy life.

letitbe90

The problem with this bidding approach that people are much more likely to be flaky or bid out of curiosity as to what properties go for.

I know you might believe this is in all parties interest but really all that will happen is a lot of time wasted and more flaky bidders.

eBay is a classic example of how poor bidding systems work and how many times the winner asks the seller “actually please sell to the other guy”.

Even house auctions that occur, so many threads of people wanting to cancel their winning bid and trying to weasel out of a contract without fee.

In many ways, the bidding process makes people detached from the reality of buying a house and becomes too much of a superficial bidding war.

Cakeguts

If I was selling a house and someone did that I would not sell to them because I would suspect them of trying to get money off before exchange. Or that they were time wasters.

Forwandert

We recently purchased a house on best and final offer. We put in our initial offer on the exact price on 'offers over' ended up going several thousand pounds over on best and final and purchasing.

Only thing with the best and final offer system was the house was valued at the price we initially offered so with a little negotiating back and forth the vendors ending up accepting our initial offer price anyway.

kinger101

DAVESQUARED wrote: »

I guess if you sell houses every day for a living (ie like a lazy estate agent) then a dozen phone calls to agree the final and highest bidder but for the average person (and this couple that had lived there for 10+ years) I'm not sure why people would worry about a few phone calls every decade or so when they sell a house.

A dozen phone calls playing potential buyers off against each other. Sounds about the worst possible way of doing it for all parties concerned.

ethank

The Estate Agent does not act for you, it acts for the seller. Like it or not. This is a legal tactic.
I personally prefer to say what I want and mean what I say, but all sellers are different.

cybervic

DAVESQUARED wrote: »

The only reason for this post was to explore this approach to choosing a bid serves an real advantage. Certainly don't feel any guilt at all and it wasn't game playing the offer was what my son thought was reasonable and might win.

If your son was indicating he's willing to increase the offer, he's then game playing it by putting forward a below-reasonable offer to see the reaction first, which unfortunately the seller wasn't into this and wants to move on.

I've just bough my place last year, had seen 70+ places and got outbid several times, never once did the EA reveal other's offers to us. Best n final offer approach happened several time when a property is priced right and it's popular. It is a common approach nowadays.

MysteryMe

It is not new. I helped my mother sell her house about 15 years ago. She received two full asking price offers so I told the agent to take it to best and final offers by close of business. Neither my mother or I were interested in back and forth negotiation. One of the interested parties decided not to increase their offer and the other did, they got the house. I would not have entertained anyone doing what the OPs son did, which was basically mucking around and ignoring what was asked of them.

shortcrust

So people who’ve never heard of a property going to full and final offers, and thought the EA should have revealed details of other offers somehow felt they were well placed to offer bidding advice?!

My advice to your son is to ignore people who clearly don’t know what they’re talking about. You’ve done him a disservice.

paddy's_mum

sheramber wrote: »

The seller wanted a sale , not an ongoing barter.

In a nutshell!

There's a fine line between negotiation and being a 'tyre-kicker'