To think we are being played?

[chubbymomie2012]

We are trying to buy a house. No chain cash buyers. We saw a house I fell in love with which had a very low bid already on it. We increased the bid by £1000. They then increased by £500. So did we etc this happened 7 times so we upped by £1000 this time. They have come back with another £500.

This has been going on for 2 weeks. Each time it takes them at least 24 hrs to come back with their bid. They are in the same position as us so no obvious reason to delay.

My OH reckons we are being played. What would you do?

Who are they? The Sellers?

Or the other bidders?

I don't really understand. Do you think it's like ebay where the sellers friend is putting in spurious bids to up the price?

Why haven't they just put the house up for sale with a price of £x?

Hmm can the estate agent help? Or do you think that they might be involved? In this situation I might be tempted to ask what price it would take for them to accept the offer and take it off the Market.

Mm. I would be suspicious, ESP as you said you fell in love with the place. If the agent knows this, they use the information. Can you make your offer subject to final agreement?

I would go in, make your final and best offer and then walk away.

It's only a game, if you are playing, stop the play.

Pull out. This happened to me a number of years ago until the house was over 20k more than the original asking price. Within 2 days, the estate agent was back on the phone saying the other bidders had pulled out and the vendor would sell at my last offer.

I told them "no way" and offered the original amount again. Didn't end up buying it as the survey came back saying that it wasn't so much a doer-upper, as a demolish-and-start-againer.

You must have only gone upout £6 or £7k from the original very low bid? Is this correct?

Why dont you go up several thousand a bid instead of faffing aroound with hundreds, which is hardly worthwhile when dealing with houses?

Are you still under the asking price? Or is it closed bids?

I dont think you are being played, but merely negotiating. They possibly think you are playing them. As a negotiating strategy, it would have placed you in a stronger position had you offered say £4000 More and then another two, and then refused to budge.

Well, if it is a couple bidding then it could just be that they are both at work, so want to discuss their next move in the evening, hence the 24 delay. They are probably just trying to make sure they don't pay a penny over what they need to, hence the small increments.

As their offer was in first and very low I wouldn't be that suspicious to be honest.

I'd walk away unless I really really liked it. Even if I wasn't suspicious (which I wouldn't be particularly) I can't imagine what the estate agents and the owners are playing at by allowing this to go on.

I'd be suspicious that it was someone trying to help push a price up if they bid after you. But their bid was first.

They're probably just trying to pay as little as possible. Like you.

I'd agree my max price and keep bidding up to that point and then walk away.

Whole thing sounds a bit odd. The estate agent shouldn't be telling you what the other bids are unless they had permission. But if the bid was low, the increments are small, why would the owners publicise the fact? They might say that there was another bid, but not that it was a low one. I'd just decide what you are happy paying/what you think it is worth and make a final bid. Walk away after that.

Ask the Estate Agent to best and final offers. Tell them you are getting fed up with the faffing around. Also, this does sound like dodgy practice somewhere along the line ... you should not know the precise details of the other party's bid.

Make a best and final and then walk away. As someone else said, it's only a game if you keep playing.

When we sold we had a bidding war that involved increments of £500. Pathetic. Really irritating.

We got into a bidding war when we bought our house. We put in an offer, then another couple put in an offer of £1000 above the price. We upped the offer by £5000, they upped it by £1000. This went on for a while. After a bit, the sellers were so fed up with the other couple playing games, they offered the house to us.

We had a similar issue some years back, we worked out our best offer and put that in with a message that this was a final offer. It was refused as the buyer thought he would get more and we went after another house which fell through on survey (almost literally!)

When we re-registered with the estate agents we were chased and asked if we would submit our last offer again, we refused and offered our first offer again which was grudgingly accepted after a bit of haggling. We eventually got our dream house for £7k less than our earlier offer.

The house was evacuated and so is being sold by the local housing executive and they will be in no hurry to sell and are happy to let us bid against each other. I see now that this is poss just a case of the other guys wanting to pay as low as poss for it. It's massively frustrating though. I wasn't to put in our final offer which takes the bid up my approx 15000 but OH is happy to increase by £1000 to £500 each time. :-(

No, stop bidding and look for another house. If they are messing about you will be chased and you can re offer the first amount. If they are a pain at this early stage, it will only get worse. Buy from someone else if you can.

Whenever I've bid on a house the estate agents have always told us the details of other bids, why wouldn't they?

In this instance I would increase the bid by a decent but not excessive amount - say £2k. Perhaps a little more if you love it - maybe £5k. Then say your offer holds for 24 hours at which point you will walk away if the offer had not been accepted, all viewings cancelled and the property taken off the website etc. Make sure you have filled out all necessary paperwork eg forms to authorise the agent to put the offer to the vendor , so that there is no delay.