This heading reminded me of a situation that I keep on wondering about. I am not accusing the agent of dirty tricks at all (he's/her job is to get the highest amount for the vendor). I am just curious about if it should of been dealt differently for the next time I buy a property.
The situation was my friend (now girlfriend) and I looked at a unit. When we saw the unit we asked for the S.32. Got the S.32 and 5 days went passed (while we did some background stuff).
When we looked at the property and for the next 4 and half days I told my friend to offer $222,000. This was never told to the agent. Before giving the details of the offer on the property to the agent I decided the offer should be reduced to $218,000 (see if it could be gotten cheaper).
So the $218,000 offer was put on the table. The agent came back to my friend within 24 hours and said she could offer $218,000 but he thinks the vendor wouldn't accept it as previously the vendor had an agreement for between $225k to $235K previously but that offer fell through because of finance issues. However if my friend offered $222k the property would most likely be hers. Well we agreed to offer $222k and property was ours.
These are the what ifs that keep going in my head.
1) Should we have offered less than $218,000 (it was advertised at $205k to $225k, however previously it was advertised at $215k to $235k). IE. offered between $210k to $212k? Would the agent gone back to us with an acceptable offer to the vendor like he did if it went $210k to $212k and that price been less than $222k?
2) Should we kept to our guns and stuck with $218k and saw what happened? Yes would have been risky as another buyer could of come in, but any chance the vendor would of accepted $218k.
Once setlement does occur I plan to ask the real estate agent the 2nd question (as I'm curious if the property could have gotten cheaper.)
Interested in peoples thoughts on this.