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We were told the same thing when we bought our current home. At the time I was pretty pregnant and we had already put bids on 2 other houses. The first was rejected outright because it was "too low" but it was based on comps. It was an estate and the house sat on the market for another year and sold for less than what we offered. The second house we decided the house needed too much work.
After we made the offer on our current home, same thing happened! They had already accepted our offer (10% less than asking and again, based on comps) and the agent says they got a full price offer. I told them to take it. At that point I didn't give a crap. I was just ready to find a nice rental and forget it for a few months until after the baby. Of course, they ended up accepting our offer just because they liked us so much and felt soooo bad for me. Serious horse $&@#. LOL. I'm sure the other offer was BS.
Yeah, they liked you that's why.
Some RE agents are barely above the level of used car salesmen.
It's totally unethical, may even be illegal. The agent's fiduciary responsibility is to their client. Sounds to me like what happened is a coincidence.
If their are higher bids it is beneficial to the seller to communicate them to a potential buyer who has a lower bid. If you move your bid higher without knowing the higher bids are real then you are potentially bidding against yourself.
If their are higher bids it is beneficial to the seller to communicate them to a potential buyer who has a lower bid. If you move your bid higher without knowing the higher bids are real then you are potentially bidding against yourself.
Sharing bids is beneficial to the seller to raise lower bids if the only possible scenario is that the accepted bid goes to closing. However, that doesn't always happen for various reasons and it could end up harming the seller. Example, Seller has Offer A and Offer B. Offer A is $10 with 95% financing and Offer B is $8 with 20% down. The highest offer is not necessarily the best offer, depending on your tolerance of risk. But say you tell Offer B that there has been a higher offer of $10 and rather than countering, Offer B bows out. Then you have Offer A. Then Offer A, can't get financing so the deal falls apart. You go back to Offer B and tell them the house is back on the market. Now, if you hadn't told Offer B that Offer A was $10, perhaps Offer B would have made an offer of $12 when Offer A falls through. However, because Offer B knows that you accepted $10 with Offer A, that is what they will offer and money is potentially left on the table.
And agents who lie about multiple offers are what give agents a bad name. Most agents are in it for the long haul and if you can only pull the multiple offer card a few times before you begin to develop a reputation amongst agents. Then when the multiple offer ploy fails and all buyers walk (as it inevitably one day will) your seller will be furious and then word will get out to the community at large. Most agents that I know value their reputation too much to earn a few extra dollars by lying like that.
ETA: In today's market, there are legitimately situations at all price points, where you are in a multiple bid situation. The inventory is just that low. However, as a previous poster said, these usually occur right at listing or a price change. I would be a lot more skeptical of multiple offers on a property that has been on the market 3 months with no price changes.
If you bid 300,000 and I bid 305,000, but you had the better credit, most straight forward mortgage and a bigger down payment, the seller should pick you.. I've lost several deals because the buyers could not get a mortgage and this is after we've paid for lawyers and such.
Good buyers are hard to come by. Don't forget to remind your agent of that. It is their job to get you the house you want at the price you want. Why else would you have a buyers agent.
By the way, I bought my house without a buyers agent. I offered 10% below sale price as a final offer. I justified it based on the Prudential Ellis report for that quarter. When they came back, I said no. (but then called them up a few days later and came up a little). I believe the sellers agent really wanted me to purchase the house because he didn't have to split the commission with another agent. So it didn't matter that I would not come up another 20,000 or so because they'd get all the commission!!
Dump your buyers agent and put offers on several houses you like and make sure they all know it! They will want to snag you if you appear to be able to get a mortgage.
Last edited by nicholebydesign; 03-12-2013 at 08:27 PM..
One would think that's the case, but not in 2013 Long Island. We've sold our home, are all cash buyers and would offer sellers a chance to move quickly in an uncomplicated deal. Yet, as we bid on homes, I am surprised at how we are being jerked around by sellers and agents. I attribute it to several factors: 1) agents whipping sellers into a frenzy by suggesting the housing market has fully recovered when it has not; 2) media stories that do the same, i.e. Money Magazine's current cover story, "Housing is Back"; 3) the rising stock market; 4) continuing low mortgage rates; and 5) a relatively low inventory. Sellers have been led to believe it's 2005 all over again and they can get back on the gravy train.
One would think that's the case, but not in 2013 Long Island. We've sold our home, are all cash buyers and would offer sellers a chance to move quickly in an uncomplicated deal. Yet, as we bid on homes, I am surprised at how we are being jerked around by sellers and agents. I attribute it to several factors: 1) agents whipping sellers into a frenzy by suggesting the housing market has fully recovered when it has not; 2) media stories that do the same, i.e. Money Magazine's current cover story, "Housing is Back"; 3) the rising stock market; 4) continuing low mortgage rates; and 5) a relatively low inventory. Sellers have been led to believe it's 2005 all over again and they can get back on the gravy train.
This is an interesting perspective. I tried to locate that article and saw this one:
"Values continued to decline on Long Island, N.Y., however, where prices fell 8.1% and where Stiff said the turnaround in median income lagged the rest of the nation by about a year." , which I find is very telling.
I dont see prices going up very quickly here - I am looking at listings for homes on the market several months and most of them are showing price drops of 2-20%.
Last edited by LegalDiva; 03-13-2013 at 07:50 AM..
That happened to us so many times when we were buying our first house and it's just sheer laziness on the part of the agent if there really was a deal and it fell thru...to not get back in touch with other offers.
But, sellers put up with it, so they are part of the problem. When we were selling I followed up for feedback every time our house was shown. Makes you wonder how motivated most people are - moving is such a hassle and expense.
If their are higher bids it is beneficial to the seller to communicate them to a potential buyer who has a lower bid. If you move your bid higher without knowing the higher bids are real then you are potentially bidding against yourself.
Which is the buyer's problem, not the seller. And the bidding stage is different from asking what an accepted offer is. of course if you are in the process of making offers and negotiating and you are up against someone else, you want to know the numbers. That is what happened with our house and we had savvy buyers who went up in very small increments. They eventually outbid the other party who bowed out.
But if we'd had an accepted offer, and then someone else made an offer, then there's no reason to give out the info to the party wanting to make another offer. In a perfect world, that scenario would not exist because you'd call to make an offer the agent would tell you "sorry, we already have an accepted offer - yours will be a backup" - that's what happens here; offers are in writing and once that happens there is a "due diligence period" for inspections and either side can back out - it's short. Backup offers can be made at that point.
One would think that's the case, but not in 2013 Long Island. We've sold our home, are all cash buyers and would offer sellers a chance to move quickly in an uncomplicated deal. Yet, as we bid on homes, I am surprised at how we are being jerked around by sellers and agents. I attribute it to several factors: 1) agents whipping sellers into a frenzy by suggesting the housing market has fully recovered when it has not; 2) media stories that do the same, i.e. Money Magazine's current cover story, "Housing is Back"; 3) the rising stock market; 4) continuing low mortgage rates; and 5) a relatively low inventory. Sellers have been led to believe it's 2005 all over again and they can get back on the gravy train.
Most people are too dumb to take the cash deal and easy closing. Seriously when you come down to $10K it's not worth getting worked up over but 90% of sellers get crazed.
When my parents sold their house they priced it under comps and all their neighbors were pissed (which was funny because my parents' house was one of the biggest on the block and weren't comparable to the cookie cutter ranches everyone else had anyway) - and I know from selling myself that neighbors get nutty when you price your house. I had one neighbor who kept saying to me "your house should sell fast since you priced it SO LOW". Hell, it was 2010, not 2004, when she last had hers appraised.
Now my parents' buyers did come up with some nutty inspection requests and that was when my dad called their agent and said "the deal is off - we're putting the house back on the market" and they came to heel pretty quickly. So buyers can be greedy too.
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I attribute it to several factors: 1) agents whipping sellers into a frenzy by suggesting the housing market has fully recovered when it has not; 2) media stories that do the same, i.e. Money Magazine's current cover story, "Housing is Back"; 3) the rising stock market; 4) continuing low mortgage rates; and 5) a relatively low inventory. Sellers have been led to believe it's 2005 all over again and they can get back on the gravy train.
