Buyers Declaration

[Xtine]

Does anyone regularly sign Buyers Declarations out there, or more to the point, refuse to sign them? Asy, can you answer this one?


What I mean is the following:

BUYERS DECLARATION

I xxx, hereby acknowledge that XXX P/L have made me aware that there is another offer on the property at xxx address.

I further acknowledge that the offer I have made is my best offer and that I have been made fully aware by the Agent that I may not have an opportunity to make a better offer.

XXX P/L agree to treat my offer in a strictly confidential manner and that the particulars of the offer will not be disclosed to any person other than the Vendor of the property.

Signed......BLAH,BLAH
Witnessed....BLAH, BLAH, BLAH



The agent says he needs this signed, EVEN THOUGH, there are no other offers to date, because the ppty is only being advertised this weekend in the papers.

This sounds like a tender process to me. Is it a process well known elsewhere?

 

[Aceyducey]

Xtine,

Note this is my opinion only - get a few others before acting...

90% of what agents ask you to do or sign you are not required to do or sign.

In this case, there is no other offer, signing this document would be untruthful...tell the RE Agent that you cannot in good faith sign it

Did you put your offer in writing?

if not - do so. This will give comfort to the vendor that you are for real, but bear in mind that the agent will use it (without showing it) to try to get other, higher, offers

Cheers,

Aceyducey

 

[asy]

hiya Xtine!

It's not a tender process, but we have all been told to start getting ppl to sign these kinds of documents (by the agent's groups, such as REIV/Q...).

What it means is that if they get another offer they HAVE to present them all to the vendor, and yours may not be chosen.

Some times the vendor is happy with one of the offers and signs on the spot, sometimes they ask for the agent to go back to the prospective purchasers with a counter offer.

It also covers the agency if two agents (usually unbeknownst to one another) have both got offers on the same property.

It used to be that we would go back to one then the other to play them both out, but there are two problems with this, ppl accuse us of running an auction, and the main one, the underbidder, almost inevitably, claims that they 'would have paid more given the chance'.

You would be surprised how many times I have said to someone, "Is this your FINAL offer, if it is, the property will PROBABLY be sold to SOMEONE ELSE" and had them say "Yes, I won't pay a cent more", only to have them come back and get angry at me because "They thought I was lying, and there was no other bidder...".

This kind of disclaimer document stops this.

We are signing a similar one, and I believe Kev's office is too.

I had a situation a couple of months ago where we didn't have these in place yet, and we told one particular purchaser that there was another person interested in the property, and to make her best offer, as both offers were being presented to the vendor that evening. She didn't believe the salesman, but luckilly, I had also introduced myself to her and made sure she was aware that there was another offer on the property. We asked her to make her best offer, which she did and assured us that she wouldn't go any higher. The property sold to the other person. This purchaser called my office and abused me and then rang the professionals head office to complain about our conduct, claiming that we were shonky and she would have paid what they did. (In fact her offer was 1k higher, but the other was a cash, no finance (money in bank) unconditional offer, and hers was subject to lots of differrent things, including council approvals etc, the vendor took the easy option.) She rang me back later in the afternoon to apologise once she had cooled down. The document you describe seeks to stop this.

hope this helps,

asy