Best and final offers - houses

rentaghost

rentaghost

Striker
Shit system. My daughter is going through the process of trying to buy a house and everything seems to go through this ‘best and final’ system. She missed out again today. Offers over 220k. Ends up being a guessing game - her offer was 8.5k over the asking price and it wasn’t enough. It’s sneaky - the estates agents let buyers know if a higher offer has come in right up until the last minute. Anyone else had any luck or disappointments through this system?
 


rentaghost said:
Shit system. My daughter is going through the process of trying to buy a house and everything seems to go through this ‘best and final’ system. She missed out again today. Offers over 220k. Ends up being a guessing game - her offer was 8.5k over the asking price and it wasn’t enough. It’s sneaky - the estates agents let buyers know if a higher offer has come in right up until the last minute. Anyone else had any luck or disappointments through this system?
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No but when I sold mine, had 3 final bids, 2 were the same and 1 was £200 over those 2 which I thought was a bit dodgy
 
rentaghost said:
Shit system. My daughter is going through the process of trying to buy a house and everything seems to go through this ‘best and final’ system. She missed out again today. Offers over 220k. Ends up being a guessing game - her offer was 8.5k over the asking price and it wasn’t enough. It’s sneaky - the estates agents let buyers know if a higher offer has come in right up until the last minute. Anyone else had any luck or disappointments through this system?
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It’s a shit system but the estate agent is there to get the buyer as much money as possible and if there are multiple people putting offers in then making people go straight to their highest bid is one way to do that. It’s always crap being on the losing end of it though.
 
rentaghost said:
Shit system. My daughter is going through the process of trying to buy a house and everything seems to go through this ‘best and final’ system. She missed out again today. Offers over 220k. Ends up being a guessing game - her offer was 8.5k over the asking price and it wasn’t enough. It’s sneaky - the estates agents let buyers know if a higher offer has come in right up until the last minute. Anyone else had any luck or disappointments through this system?
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Have missed out bidding over and been successful bidding under asking price. I think it's more common for flats down here where competition is so high.
 
Sold ours last year, refused to use that system even though the estate agent was keen, put it up at a fair price and sold it £2k lower than asking. May have got more but more than happy with the way we went, fair and transparent. Estate agents are pieces of work like, wouldn’t trust any of them.
Daughter tried 3 times last year, kept failing and was heartbroken, pleased she got sorted by buying in a traditional way in the end but it’s a cruel process imho.
 
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Had a battle with one I offered asking price then put 5k over asking someone went 8k over asking then pulled out estate agent bombarded me with saying the would accept the 5k over waited a while and put 5k under asking it was accepted in the end righr clart on.
MiddleAgedMan said:
It's sad to miss out on the house you had your heart set on, but there's always another and just be satisfied in yourself that you bid what you think it's worth / what you can afford. Going higher than either is not worth it
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Think a lot of first time buyers get stung by this to be fair it’s preying on the likes of them as they haven’t bought before what not.
 
Spike said:
It’s shit all round, even if you win you will always have niggling in the back of your mind that you’ve over paid and got rinsed
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Years ago a mate who worked in a bank and had the advantage of a cheap mortgage went in and offered £5k over the asking price which was accepted immediately.

His point of view was, it was the house he wanted in the position he wanted and to take the long term view that £5k extra upfront was money well spent, he was proved right.
 
Sunderland Til I Cry said:
Sold ours last year, refused to use that system even though the estate agent was keen, put it up at a fair price and sold it £2k lower than asking. May have got more but more than happy with the way we went, fair and transparent. Estate agents are pieces of work like, wouldn’t trust any of them.
Daughter tried 3 times last year, kept failing and was heartbroken, pleased she got sorted by buying in a traditional way in the end but it’s a cruel process imho.
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It's to stop gazumping though isn't it?

Must be a high demand property. If people put in their best offer, surely it's fair? Of course not ideal when you lose out.
 
I've been involved in best and final offers before and the agents didn't leak info on other offers. I tried to get info out of them and they absolutely would give nothing away. It's just a way of squeezing the best price out when there's a lot of interest in a house.
 
DisillusionedOldGit said:
This system stinks . How does the vendor know if he received the highest bid . How can he be sure the agent hasn't binned the highest offer in favour of of someone who's given him a bung . The whole system is open to abuse which means of course that it will be abused .
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That would be illegal though.
 
My mam and dad's house was on the market 5 days and the offers got silly to the point they asked it to stop when it was 15k ove the asking price.

They have just had the buyers surveyor round who's knocked it back down to the asking price, so all in all a waste of time
 

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