[Closed] Tell me your stories about bidding on a house

We've just sold one via auction, was pretty painless, though all the bids came in the last 15mins (was on the market for 3 weeks), then once the auction had ended, the high bidder didn't respond to the auction house's request for payment of the fees.

As it happens a chap missed the auction but put an offer in anyway, that was above the high bidder, so he's paid through the auction folk as if he's won the auction.

Point is, even if you don't win, keep an eye out for if the winners eyes are bigger than their wallet

We bid, so did 5 other people. 3 of them outbid us. We were gutted.

Fast forward 2 months or so, the deal with the highest bidder fell through and it went back on the market. I called up and said 'we've got the funds ready to go, our offer still stands'. We got it.

My point is, even if you get outbid, it's not necessarily game over.

Edit: yes, sort of like what TH already said ^.

My story was buying from the local Diocese back in 2001 - they accepted my offer which was £100K under their original price, then a £50K chip after survey. Sprinkles on top when my solicitor confirmed the purchase was exempt from SDLT, saving a five figure payment to HMRC. Happy days indeed, and good luck!

(20 years ago) Wanted a fixer upper that had been on the market for more than a year, worst house on the best street kind of deal. Originally £105k, it had been dropped to £95k and was still a stretch for us, but saved our pennies and ate chick pea curry for a few months, then headed in to see the estate agent for a negotiation.

We were hoping our absolute maximum £93K would seal the deal. As luck would have it, we got to see the boss, who was totally sick of this place hanging around on his books and the owner being a PITA with viewings, so as we sat down he told us "look, before you say anything, you'll be wasting all our times offering anything less than £86k, they need that to pay the family."

"Oh well, if that's what it has to be...(extends hand)"

Our first house was a repo, being sold by the Halifax and was sealed bids. We had no chain so even though there were offers higher than ours they picked us!

Where is it?
I'm in Edinburgh, you'd be lucky to get something for 8% OVER the valuation, rather than 8% under

If someone had put a "time limit" on a bid for my property I'd have told them to jog on.

That time limit is nonsense any way .... It's not as if you aren't going to honour the bid tomorrow or the next day or next week.

What was the thinking there ?

I assume the time limit comes because it's an auction, not OP saying ' ill give you X but only if you agree by this afternoon.

Something like 3 months to get the offer accepted on our first house - Mrs houseseller had done the dirty on Mr houseseller and eloped to the states with their next door neighbours son...

We bid on a fixer-upper year before last.
Went to final bids, which we won, great! Turns out the house was riddled with asbestos and would cost £20k to sort. Luckily their solicitor was a dick so we ended up pulling out on completion day and eventually found the house we've been doing up which is much, much better.
That turned out to have asbestos too, which the surveyor missed. Cost us £6k to sort but went through the complaints procedure and got all of the money back (and 25% of the survey fee) from the surveyor. He was not a happy chappy. We were 🙂

Is the time limit a Scottish thing? I think we might have put one on one of our bids or one of the bidders put one on our flat. I thought it was more because a bid is a commitment the bidder has to honour so you don't want it standing indefinitely?

Kind of stating the obvious in terms of supply/demand economics but if you've been watching the market seeing what stuff goes for you'll have a feel for what is a cheeky offer and what is generous. If the sort of stuff you've wanted has been coming up frequently you can afford to bid more on the cheeky end of the scale. If you would be severly dissappointed to miss out bid more. Despite being very keen on data analysis this is one part of my life I wont apply it to, at the end of the day its somewhere you're going to spend a lot of your life. You know if it feels 'right' for you, a few years down the line you're not going to be sitting there thinking ooh I got a great deal in terms of £/m2 for this area...

My Mrs put an offer in for £20k more than we had a greed to.

Turns out she was correct and we live in a lovely house/area

Got it.

There were no other bidders so the owner came back with her suggestion and we ended up meeting half way between the asking price and my initial bid.

The time limit is actually required (forgot to say, I'm in Norway). Once you make an offer it's binding until it expires so normally you just make it until the end of the day.

I think I prefer the system here to what it is in Scotland, TBH. At least this way you don't have to stress about whether you're massively overpaying or putting in an offer that's got no chance.

I'm pretty happy but at the same time the doubt is starting to creep in. I think that's a pretty normal feeling though.

TBF, any system is better than the english 'you aren't committed until you do all the legal work and exchange contracts, in a few months' one. Especially given how useless/untrustworthy everyone I've encountered in the property 'industry' is...

Speaking as a seller who has had a buyer pull out on day of exchange, with a particularly lame excuse.

We also put an final offer in on another house where we were the highest offer (by £5k) but the seller's wanted a quick completion and went with a cash buyer.

forgot to say, I’m in Norway

Which would explain why even the Scots wondered wtf you were talking about.