Buying houses, does everyone lie?

[m3jappa]

We have had our house up for sale for a while and have had around 25 viewings. Of these viewings I reckon 20 are people who 'have no chain' or 'don't need to sell their place'

We have now had an offer we are happy with which is actually from someone I know, he does need to sell his house though but should quite quickly.

Anyway, we have seen a house we like, been on for a while, bit pricey, we are going to offer about 9% less. Their agent is in frequent contact with us, asking how our sale is going as he knows we are interested and knows out max figure to bid.

However he is strongly recommending not telling the vendor until ours has sold (I.e when our buyers house has sold). He says because we are offering less and it's been on a while we have more chance of getting it for the lower bid if it goes on a bit longer.

Anyway, my wife was speaking to our friend the other day and she was telling her that the house we want doesn't even know our offer and as such we currently have no chance of it coming off the market. Her friend was gobsmacked that we didn't just lie, just tell the agent we have a complete chain, she said that when her and her husband buy a place they lie through their front teeth to get it.

Which leads me back to all our viewings and other places which have been up for sale recently which we would have been interested in had it not been for 'cash buyers'

So does everyone lie then? I won't be doing it either way as I don't think it's very fair. But I reckon this woman we know may well be right.

[m3jappa]

Surely though if you lie and say your house is sold then you start going through the actual buying process which costs money. Say you can't then sell your house what then happens? I suppose everyone is just let down and it falls apart.

[m3jappa]

Tomo1971 said:

Why is THEIR estate agent suggesting that you dont submit an offer yet. That is rather odd, it is their job and moral obligation to pass on ANY offer from prospective buyers. Maybe he thinks that the sellers will be tempted and accept thus reducing their commission (if the house was on longer and received a better offer).

Seems quite strange.

It does seem strange. The way he's selling it to me is that because we are offering less and our chain isn't complete she's very unlikely to accept the offer and even less unlikely to take off the market which is fair enough.
He has suggested that after a couple of weeks or month or whatever that if no one else has bought but our chain is complete then maybe she will accept.
I get all that.

However at the same time I'm not even sure if we are totally barking up the wrong tree in that her answer will be a flat no. Maybe the agent thinks we can up our offer (we can't/don't want to, especially if it's not sold in 1,2,3 months time.) it would be nice to know if it was something she would consider.

The agents phoned my wife a couple of times now to see how we are getting on and we know there's not been lots of interest.


Back to the lies, what most have said is what I have thought. I think they could find out easily if your telling a lie and then you would lose all credibility, possibly making the vendor not even want to deal with you.