Lied to by EAs, all part of the game?

[stevieknicks]

We were assured we were the only interested party in a house and waited 3 weeks to have an offer accepted. Our EA said he had heard that there were other buyers on the scene but the vending agent assured us twice was not the case.
And today the other buyers had their offer accepted.
Can an EA ever be trusted?!
So frustrating.....

We had this when we bought our house. Apparently a 'church widow' ??? was very interested in the house.

Seems like a lucky escape. Why would you want to get into a bidding war with someone else over a house in a falling market!

nothing falling round here!

Sorry to hear that.

We're looking to buy 5 bed detached house in Surrey/Kent commuter belt and we're seeing lots of reduced prices, broken chains, much more supply. All from stupidly high asking prices of course but its a start ...

Not falling where we just bought either, in the catchment areas of good schools in our surrey area. Sold our prop in SWLondon in three days, too. Depends very much where you are.

As I've said before, estate agents have a default setting of "lie". I think it's part of their training and after a period of time in the job you'll find that they're unable to tell the truth. Some of the more experience ones are unable to tell what the truth is.

I think Siasl is right, in the current housing market there's no point getting into a bidding war.

Ours have been shocking. It's a case of telling you what you want to hear as opposed to the boring old truth.

They seem to either lie or wildly speculate and it's caused us so much confusion.

The housebuying process has to be the most flawed and outdated process in the history of processes!

I know there is never a right answer - but what would you say to selling property now (a flat), sticking the money in a bank and renting a nice house for a bit. Anyone with experience of getting off the house owning merry go round for a bit? We are just so wary of panic buying if things go into freefall in the next couple of months....

We did that and are just about to complete on a house. It was nice not to be panicked into buying something.

I did it, through circumstance rather than choice. I sold early in 2008 and bought in October last year. It does put you in a good position when you do buy as you can take your time and the lack of a chain makes you very attractive to a vendor.

If you want to do it in anticipation of house prices falling then don't bother. There's very little evidence that prices will fall although the market is likely to stay flat for quite a while. You'll also end up procrastinating about buying because you'll be worried about prices dropping.