Do Estate agents ALWAYS tell you there's been an offer on the house you've viewed

[BellyChancer]

#saw a house recently, on the market for £xxx. i like it. but obviously lots to think about. agent told me there's been an offer on it for xxx+5k. I thought, really? cos it's been sitting here unsold for six months and the moment I view it there's been an offer. My budget will be tight, so I said to the agent, right, well, the last thing I want is to get into a bidding war, and I can't go higher than what they've offered, so if this offer falls through, then, maybe ring me. And I thought, ok, well, nice house, shame, goodbye then. Then she clawed it back and said 'oh, well, that couple doesn't have finance in place!' She knows i don't need agreement.

Is this a total cabaret?

It’s not at all unknown for them to make offers up, to encourage you to offer, or to offer more.
I don’t tar them all with this brush, but there’s no doubt that some of them are up to every dodge in the book.

Hey, my post is uploaded or not?

Reading this with interest.

Put an offer on a vacant possession flat in mid June which was accepted using the sale proceeds of my late mother’s house. Only two of us in the chain. The couple buying mother’s house were FTB.

Things took a while to get processed and my buyers only got their mortgage approved last week. My solicitor told me yesterday that exchange will definitely be this week.

Today I get a phone call from the vendor’s estate agent telling me that another couple are very keen on the flat and “because the offer was well under the asking price” it was likely that the vendor will be hard nosed and accept theirs. Apparently, they are also willing to put a non returnable deposit on it to secure it too. Their own property is under offer but the only advantage I have over them is they are in a long chain.

With exchange imminent, I’m slightly suspicious of the agent. This flat has been on the market for nearly a year with a few bites, but no one has got as close as me to a sale. Why the sudden interest?

I was a bit naughty and got a friend to ring the agent’s office to pretend she was also interested in the flat and she spoke to another agent who said that they were very sorry, the flat was under offer but would she be interested in anything else? Surely, if the vendor was still open to offers, this would have been conveyed to my friend? She wasn’t asked by them about her finance situation or whether she would like to put in a higher offer.

Do you think the agent is trying it on or maybe trying to put me under pressure to exchange? If so, strange way to go around it.

The reason they may not put offers forward, or tell you they’ve been rejected, is because they’ve got a mate, or someone they have a brown-envelope arrangement with, who wants the property and is hoping to get it cheaply when the vendors are getting desperate.

I’m well aware that not all EAs are dodgy, but I do have personal experience of this sort of thing, and someone else boasted to me of his brown-envelope arrangement with his local EAs.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

The reason they may not put offers forward, or tell you they’ve been rejected, is because they’ve got a mate, or someone they have a brown-envelope arrangement with, who wants the property and is hoping to get it cheaply when the vendors are getting desperate.

I’m well aware that not all EAs are dodgy, but I do have personal experience of this sort of thing, and someone else boasted to me of his brown-envelope arrangement with his local EAs.

Yep I've heard about these dealing too.

I basically would take every single thing an estate agent told me with a pinch of salt.

They are practised liars - even if half the tome they are not very good at it.

The whole, yes there's another very interested (mythical) couple 'from London' who are looking at making an offer - I've had that every single time I've bought a house, and when I've interviewed agents for selling my place too!

The vendor is actually a part exchange company - the property I am bidding on was a ‘trade in’ for a McCarthy Stone property. Therefore, I’m hoping that whilst the company will want a good price, they won’t be as driven as an individual who wants every last penny to purchase something else.

@BellyChancer I suggest you work in the basis that every word that comes out of the estate agents mouth is a lie. They will do anything to secure the commission and generally morals and observing rules come pretty low.

Since this thread is 7 years old I think there's a fair chance the OP has sorted the estate agent issue one way or another by now.

@BoxAndKnife

Since this thread is 7 years old I think there's a fair chance the OP has sorted the estate agent issue one way or another by now.

I apologise. I resurrected it yesterday as I was in a similar scenario.