REA issues

H

Hetty

I'm not sure how I should deal with this. The agent is taking multiple 0.25% deposits and having multiple people sign contracts. I haven't dealt with this before, other agents seem to just get the highest offer to sign. Is this normal? It doesn't seem ethical.

We do want this house, but he's not giving anything away and thus I'm not sure how to offer. He said they will just take the highest, so I'm thinking that means no negotiation?

Thinking of just offering the asking price...
 
Dutch Auction....

I was involved in one of these.
We wanted to place but agent was making out that he had multiple closed envelope offers already exceeding what I was ball- parking.
Turns out it ended up selling $10K under what we were willing to pay.

I'm not sure about the .25% deposit issue, but in relation to the purchase price, you put your best offer in and that is that.

Hetty said:
I'm not sure how I should deal with this. The agent is taking multiple 0.25% deposits and having multiple people sign contracts. I haven't dealt with this before, other agents seem to just get the highest offer to sign. Is this normal? It doesn't seem ethical.

We do want this house, but he's not giving anything away and thus I'm not sure how to offer. He said they will just take the highest, so I'm thinking that means no negotiation?

Thinking of just offering the asking price...
Click to expand...
 
It's really frustrating. And can't always work out for them either, as you said, you were willing to pay more.

How long can they sit on our offer for? (with a signed contract and 0.25%)
 
Haven't made the formal written offer. I didn't know I could put a time limit. Would it be reasonable to say by Friday if we sign today? I would like to be out looking on Saturday if it's rejected.
 
Hetty said:
Haven't made the formal written offer. I didn't know I could put a time limit. Would it be reasonable to say by Friday if we sign today? I would like to be out looking on Saturday if it's rejected.
Click to expand...

Most people on SS talk about a 24hour or 'sunset' time offer to put pressure on the vendor to accept/reject the offer. I guess ti also allows people to move on quickly.

At the end of the day you need to do what you feel comfortable with so if you are comfortable with a deadline of Friday then that would be reasonable.
 
Agents require a little deposit with an offer to make it formal. It protects the vendor in case, if he accepts the offer, but the buyer decides not to proceed with the sale. Even if the buyer withdraw within cooling of period, he has to pay vendor the penalty of 0.2% of the selling price specified on contract (in VIC).

But this penalty is hard to chase, if agent did not request a full amount of 0.2% sale price as a deposit at the time of when offer is made. We are selling a land worth of $2M. The vendor told us, that he had an offer via other agent, which was pulled off. But agent has requested the buyer to pay only $1,000 deposit with an offer, but the penalty would be $4,000. The vendor is not very happy about it.

Regarding the lower selling price accepted by vendor. Quite often vendor choose lower unconditional offer over higher, but subject to finance. In fact, when we were buying our house recently, the vendor has chosen our unconditional offer, which was $15K lower than the highest offer.

And we sold our apartment recently, to the buyer, who offered $7K less, but unconditional.
 
See nothing the REA is doing wrong.

The deposit is to commit you (and other buyers) to the property and if anyone cools off they will get the cooling off fee rather than going through legal to get what is owed to the vendor.

Put forward your best offer and you can put a time limit on them. For me it depends on when I submit my offer but it would be COB the next day (5:00PM) unless I saw the agent first thing in the morning or the night before. If the agent comes back to me after that time with a signed contract you can pull out but it would be unlikely.

If I submitted an offer at 3:00pm and the agent called me back saying they are seeing the vendor tomorrow at 6:30pm I wouldn't be an ahole and say that isn't good enough and pull out my offer unless I felt he was doing weird stuff.

Remember everything is negotiable so do what you want to do and if someone beats you because they paid more deposit (not the initial deposit) than you well so be it. There is always another one around the corner ;)

Good luck!
 
Thanks all. We made an offer of the asking price, asked for an answer today, and they didn't reject our offer but they rejected our time limit. They wanted to hold on to the offer until they showed more people through on the weekend. We rescinded, we want to be able to look on the weekend and make an offer if we like a place.
 
Hetty, as you are in Sydney, I assume that the property is there as well. From what I am reading, the market is pretty hot there. Is that the case where you are looking?

As everyone knows, the agents role is to maximise the price for the seller, however not at the risk of losing a sale. Most good agents know the sellers position, and will, if you "communicate" with them, not play games, then they will try to match what you can put on the table, with what suits the seller. Will they reveal this to you .... well they should not, however the better they know your flexibility, when you submit your offer, some times the conditions that suit the seller, are more acceptable than say a higher price.

From what I read from your post, the agent knows of your interest, so they should be communicating with you pretty frequently, not only as courtesy to you, but to also benefit their client.

I hope it works out well for you.
 
GreyGhost said:
Dutch Auction....

I was involved in one of these.
We wanted to place but agent was making out that he had multiple closed envelope offers already exceeding what I was ball- parking.
Turns out it ended up selling $10K under what we were willing to pay.

I'm not sure about the .25% deposit issue, but in relation to the purchase price, you put your best offer in and that is that.
Click to expand...

No point saying you would have been willing to pay because you didn't! Does not mean anything. Just words...

If you really want a property in Sydney at the moment you have to offer your best otherwise you will walk away with your tail in between your legs spending your Saturdays going to open houses till the end of time. You want to be holding the trophy at the end of the day if it's within your budget off course.
 
So if they have an asking price instead of an "offers over", you should still treat it like an "offers over"?

We offered the asking price and knew no one else had signed on Wednesday. They said they wanted to wait until more people saw the place on Saturday, but now they've cancelled the inspection for today so I'm guessing someone offered a lot.

We were going off past recent, similar sales in the area, including in the same complex, and the price they were asking looked like too much.

I am working on my husband to get a buyer's agent, I hate dealing with all this stuff.
 
Hetty said:
So if they have an asking price instead of an "offers over", you should still treat it like an "offers over"?
Click to expand...
The price is where supply meets demand. It doesn't matter whether they have a guide price, offers over, up to, or near offer, auction, or any other selling method.

In a hot market, you have to weigh up what price you're willing to pay. If you hear it sold for $X, and you're kicking yourselves, then you didn't offer enough. You need to offer a price where, if you hear it sold for more, you think "oh well, good luck to the buyers, it wasn't worth that much to us".
 
Making an offer

Hi All,

Does anyone have an example of a typical or your own offer layout and inclusions?

I know it depends on the property and your finances at any particular time but some main points I gather are:

*The subject to finance Clause - "Subject to Finance to buyers satisfaction"
subject to DD, subject to pest/Bld inspection

*The period of time laid out in contract to go through inspection/DD

*The time on the offer (expires 5pm Friday 8th May 2015) etc

Any advice/copy would be great

Thanks
 
Even for an offer letter?

I though most have a standard offer letter and obviously if contracts are put fwd then yes definetly seek legal
 
What is a letter of offer you talk about? Only offer you should be putting is on the Contract of Sale (COS), otherwise it is useless.

Seek legal advice on clauses as the wording is very important and your finance clause would make me cross it out right away.

'Subject to Finance to buyers satisfaction' Please you know if it is to your satisfaction before you put the offer in. STF is about getting a loan, if you don't get a loan then you pull out, not sure what else you can be wanting satisfaction for. This is covered in the COS.

If you need further personal inspections do it before you submit an offer. The STB&P they will allow the inspector through.
 
His location is VIC so I would assume looking for a Victorian property as there wasn't any other mention.

Letter of offer the vendor or purchaser can easily get out of.

COS is binding.

You pick which way you want to go.

I have only and will only use the COS as my form of offering as I don't want the vendor getting out of something cause of a T&C in the COS they don't like.
 
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