Estate Agent Help

I don't have a resolution yet. The agent said he would be calling me yesterday to ask me for my best offer (along with other interested parties) and as at 9 o'clock on Thursday morning - still no phone call.

Now I am getting even more angry - forget the ethics, this is just really bad customer service and disrespectful. We are not talking about small amounts of money here. If I operated like that in my own job I wouldn't last 5 minutes. Part of me wants to call the agent and have it out with him, but the other part of me is focussing on the bigger game and that is securing the land.

I will take a deep breath and leave it another day (more time for potential buyers to come forward AAAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!)

I would call to follow up on your offer and ask the agent what the vendor's response to it is! And if they haven't presented it to them yet, demand to know why not! It was a formal offer wasn't it?

it sure was - in writing addressed to the vendor and cc'd to the agent.

So it was a contract note, contract of sale, or was it just a letter? Did you pay a deposit or indicate that you will? Sorry, just trying to be clear on your situation.

no it was simply a letter with the offer amount subject to finance and my solicitor being satisfied with the paperwork. No deposit at this stage.

Ahh, ok. I don't know if things are done differently over there to the way they are done here, but since you haven't made a 'formal' (legally binding) offer via a contract of sale, then I'd have to say that the agent is within their rights to play their game and entertain other parties... someone living there or working in the industry may want to clarify this however.

Good luck.

This seems to be what agents are actually supposed to do in situations where there may be a number of offers.

We put our property on the market mid last year and within the first week had 3 different parties interested in it. We had two real estate agents as a dual listing. They both said that they had to give everyone a chance to put their best offer and all offers had to be submitted to us at the same time. (It was actually quite formal!) So they both dropped in the contracts in envelopes and we just basically chose the right one for us.

(they had varying prices and settlement dates but all pretty similar).

I dont think its the best situation for the buyer in this case, but all you can do is put in your best offer or risk losing to someone who made a higher offer. Or you can wait it out and hope no one else puts an offer in and then you can put a separate offer in later??

I don't take any offer unless it on a contract note with a section 32 attached and some money put down. If you really want the block ask for this to happen. You can then stipulate how long the vendor has to accept the offer. Usually 3 business days but you can make it less.

A offer like you have done is not legally binding at all so even if the vendor says they accept they can change their mind and you couldn't do anything about it.

So sign a contract note and make it subject to finance. You have a 3 day cooling off period anyway which you lose if you have your solicitor look over it prior to signing.

As far as other offers go, the way my office does it is once an offer is made, other interested parties are rung and asked if they would like to submit an offer. If no-one does we submit the offer to the vendor, if one or more do, we take their offer, letting them know to put their best offered forward now as they will not get another chance. I don't reveal what the first offer was.

We then go back to whoever put in the first offer letting them know that there has been another offer put in and give them the opportunity to increase theirs. I then take these to the vendor and they either accept one or reject them all.

thanks to everyone for their advice.

The latest update is that after 5 or 6 weeks the section 32 is finally available. The agent has sent me a text message inviting me to an 'in-house auction' on the 11th. What is that about? The property has gone from a private sale with an asking price (that I have offered) to an auction.

Is this legal?