EA must have revealed our best and final figure

[KimGa]

In March our dream house came on the market for 695k. Loads of interest - it went to Best and Finals. Our offer was 741k. We had a first time buyer buying ours and we wrote a letter to the older lady selling about why we wanted the house so much (grew up nearby, children already at local schools etc).

We didn’t get it. It went to another older lady, in a longer chain who had also written a letter. EA said bids were close but that ‘it was also an emotional decision’. I took comfort in the fact that we couldn’t have gone any higher and the winning bid must have been a few thousand more.

It went through in July and I’ve just found the sold price online - 741.5k. It cannot be coincidence that the other bidder just happened to bid £500 more than my odd number bid which was 46k over asking. The EA must have revealed what ours was and asked her to go just over it. We were never offered the opportunity to increase.

I guess I already know it’s up to a seller who they sell to but I feel like this was deeply unfair - AIBU?

We are about to complete on another house now but it will always be the one that got away.

Why do you tell them it's your best and final offer.
Isn't it done through solicitors?

It does sound a bit dodgy, and agents are hardly known for their lack of dodgy-ness

But…There is a branch of an estate agents near me, which is next door to a pub, and the gardens face straight into it.

We were sat there one evening in the summer when the office cleaners arrived.

They propped open the door between the little office at the back, and the main ‘floor’, and we had a perfect view of their whiteboard which was a list of all current and potential instruction, status, offers etc - we had a right nose at the list, it was quite interesting

I would guess other branches have a similar thing? So it wouldn’t be too difficult to find someone who has access to it to give you a tip off as to what to make your bid?

It’s one way of running the sale process…

if a house is in high demand, you have a deadline to submit your best and final offer

So there is no back and forth with the seller trying to get an extra bit of money for the house, or waiting until more viewings have been done before knowing if your offer has been accepted

You do the viewing and then have til 5pm on Friday to submit the offer

Then at 5:30pm you get a call to say whether your offer has been successful or not

it is also called ‘sealed bids’

On the bids we've won I've always made it a strange figure. ie. £741,579.90.
I wouldn't dwell on it now, I hope you're very happy in your new home.

Could be coincidence, often winning bids are round figures.

Sorry you missed out, but you will probably find something better and be relieved that you didn’t get it, this is what happened to us. Good luck OP.

Aren’t not are!

That's the sold price though, not necessarily what they originally offered. Lots of sales are negotiated down after survey.

We lost out at best and finals 4 times earlier this year. Each was a different estate agent. They all held their cards incredibly close to their chests. Even after we were told we'd lost out, I would ask what the winning offer had been and they wouldn't say.

If you could have afforded an extra £500 then you didn't offer your best and final offer did you? These sealed bids can be so difficult, you had the opportunity to offer more but didn't consider the property worth more, someone else did. They got the house.

I would have thought the seller was the one who revealed the offer if they had an emotional connection with the other buyer. Or it could just be a coincidence, or as a previous poster said they could made a much higher offer and the price was negotiated down afterwards with your figure being the lowest the seller would go before remarketing.

This is what I am taking about, the emotional guilt tripping. They obviously didn’t “click” enough to accept an offer 0.6% lower than their other offer. Either pick the higher offer or give it to the person you like most. I hate this of we reallllllly want to sell to you guilt tripping to soothe their conscious whilst still getting the higher offer.

KimGa long, long ago following my divorce I found my dream home - a tiny cottage near the area I grew up in, close to family and just absolutely perfect. It needed extending but I could have done that over time.

For years I would drive past it and feel cheated for it should have been mine. I viewed the estate agents as crooks. It had gone to sealed bids - no opportunity to submit a letter in those days - and for whatever reason (but probably because one of the agents was known to be in a relationship with a local builder) my bid was unsuccessful and I was so, so upset.

However I bought another property half a mile away, although I didn’t feel the same emotional connection to it, but it's where I went on to raise my family.

Decades later the house I bought with no emotional connection is now in a sought after location and worth 10 times what I paid for it. Along with my family, I've been happy here. It turned out to be perfect for us.

My once dream cottage is now viewed as being in a lesser location with a horribly busy road running past it. It has been extended, presumably at vast cost. However unlike everything else in the locality it won't sell. It worked beautifully as a little cottage but current or past owners have practically built another house on the side of it.

It's been on the market for almost 2 years, with and without a board, and just doen't sell presumably due to location, price, busy road and not being a beautuful little cottage anymore.

It's sad for the vendor, probably not the one who got it when I didn't, but it just goes to show that things happen for a reason that isn't always apparent at the time. Now when I drive past I feel I had a lucky escape.

What was your dream house KimGa may not have lived up to your fantasy. Things aren't always apparent at the time. Let the negative emotions go and make lovely memories in your new home.