Offer to purchase questions

Hi everyone,

We are currently interested in a property that is up for Private Sale. We've called up an agent and he has said that we should fill out their Letter of Offer to Purchase and submit it to them. He also mentioned that someone else has expressed interest in the property and that once we have submitted our offer, the other party will be given 24 hours to submit their own offer.

Is this practice common in Victoria? We're concerned that the REA may just use our offer to try and hold some sort of silent auction between us and the other party.

Also, the letter to purchase has no sunset clause anywhere. Can we just add this in another sheet (no space in all the other pages of the form) or is it safer to have a handwritten note in one of the existing pages?

We've also asked the REA if after the 24 hours and the other interested party has not responded, will he then present the offer to the vendor and he was pretty vague. Should we be worried?

Sorry for the long post. Hope someone with more experience can help!
 
Small level of experience with this (4) in Melb

You need to ask your agent what their process will be- it varies amongst agents.

(1) a Jenman agent- submit your best and only offer- we did/ with a 24 hr clause. Signed Contract + deposit + whatever terms + conditions we wanted

(2) Private Sale- RE said that we only would have 1 offer. a 2nd buyer was in place to make a counter offer but they wouldn't tell them the amount of the offer. Nothing in place for counter offer. Decided didn't like this or the property that much, walked away. Property still hasn't sold, but there's a pricing issue.

(3) Auction listed for sale as vendor. Someone started the ball rolling. Was asked by agent what my reserve would be- he didn't want to risk an active auction campaign unless the price offered was near reserve. I told him to make sure it was the best offer. Offer came in at reserve and then he made his calls. Gave 1st offerer the choice of making an additional bid as the closing bid- just told them that the level was higher than previous offer and that was it. All offers were unconditional and three day cooling period was waived. Signed contract, signed waivers + 10% deposits.

(4) Auction listed for sale- Someone started the ball rolling. I think they were told that the offer needed to be near reserve to be considered. Then he made his phone calls. He told us the offer levels ie above 650, above 700 and asked if we wanted to make the offer. So this was a semi-blind auction. Verbal offers.
 
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Hi everyone,

We are currently interested in a property that is up for Private Sale. We've called up an agent and he has said that we should fill out their Letter of Offer to Purchase and submit it to them. He also mentioned that someone else has expressed interest in the property and that once we have submitted our offer, the other party will be given 24 hours to submit their own offer.
It's amazing how these coincidences work out, isn't it?!
Is this practice common in Victoria? We're concerned that the REA may just use our offer to try and hold some sort of silent auction between us and the other party.
In Victoria, we've always first come to a verbal agreement, then signed a contract.
Also, the letter to purchase has no sunset clause anywhere. Can we just add this in another sheet (no space in all the other pages of the form) or is it safer to have a handwritten note in one of the existing pages?

We've also asked the REA if after the 24 hours and the other interested party has not responded, will he then present the offer to the vendor and he was pretty vague. Should we be worried?

Sorry for the long post. Hope someone with more experience can help!

Can't say I'm "more experienced" but this in Vic, for us, it's worked like this:
  • Contact the agent
  • "Someone else has just made an offer, so you'd better be quick"
  • Submit a verbal offer with conditions
  • Negotiate the offer and/or conditions verbally with the agent, over varying time periods
  • Come to an "agreement"
  • Get "agreement" written into a contract
  • Get solicitor to check contract
  • Sign the contract with $1000 deposit
 
Question: When the REA says that someone else has made an offer for $X, how do you know the REA is telling the truth? Do they sometimes lie about the other offer to get you to raise your offer?
 
You don't.

called by a RE this evening on property (5). Have received an offer and will sell. Have until 5pm tommorrow to submit offer. argggggggggggggggggggggh
 
OK this has confused me more now. I always thought you had to put an offer in writing. We're going to speak to an agent tomorrow and organise a time to go and put in an offer next week. We were told you should always do the offer in writing. So is this not the case???

He has also said someone else is interested. As for the post above, I too was curious about how you really know someone else has put in a counter offer, or an offer fullstop!!!

I also find it difficult not to look a bit excited about the place. lol :D God it's a hard business.

Cheers

Lisa
 
I think you don't need to put an offer in writing but its better to do so. The RE is also taking it on trust that you'll come up with the signed contract and some money.

TBH for these blind auctions I'm stuck in, I know the demand is high, stock is low & they are auction campaigns. Both were inner-city.

Being on the vendor end, I know I won't seriously consider an offer unless it reaches reserve as the $ for an auction campaign are high. There's no way of knowing- I know the offer exceeds the top of the quote range & now need to decide.
 
I agree that you can't really know if there is another party interested in the property. We've been in that position before wherein we were contemplating purchasing a property and the RE told us another couple is about to make an offer. We thought he was bluffing and missed out when the other party actually made an offer that was accepted by the vendor!

The REA called this morning regarding the current property we're interested in and asked if we're interested to put in an offer since the other party made an offer in writing last night. The REA now wants us to make a verbal offer if we're interested and have the official letter to purchase in by tonight. As ldriver said, REA said he can't reveal what the other party is offering and that we should give our best and only offer.

There's an OFI tomorrow afternoon for the property, will be interesting to find out if it sells before then or they'll try to see the level of interest before accepting the offer.
 
OK this has confused me more now. I always thought you had to put an offer in writing. We're going to speak to an agent tomorrow and organise a time to go and put in an offer next week. We were told you should always do the offer in writing. So is this not the case???

He has also said someone else is interested. As for the post above, I too was curious about how you really know someone else has put in a counter offer, or an offer fullstop!!!

I also find it difficult not to look a bit excited about the place. lol :D God it's a hard business.

Cheers

Lisa

The old classic - "a verbal offer is only as good as the paper it's written on". But at least you can do a certain amount of negotiation prior to signing anything.
 
a letter of offer is good so that the vendor can get an idea. If the vendor is interested in the offer and likely to accept it get a contract written up.
 
Brickhouse, reading your post sounds exactly like my situation right now.

Agent called yesterday, told me an offer had been made Thurs night, obviously could not give me that offer. Property open for inspection this afternoon too.

God, we could be looking at the same joint. hahaha:D

This property is advertised in one of those ranges which I can't stand. 440-460 (there must be a million properties in this range these days). My guess is the vendor wants middle of the range, but...yeah. Will be talking with the agent this afternoon to organise a time to put in an offer.

Cheers

Lisa
 
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