Buying a house in the West of Ireland and losing hope
I mostly have a rant about our experience of trying to buy a house and maybe if anyone has any advice on how to not lose hope altogether, that would be greatly appreciated.
We are a mid-30s married couple, both from the west and want to stay here, who were renting but evicted due to landlord selling (that’s another story altogether), moved in with my parents and are now trying to buy our own house.
We are fully mortgage approved, have more than enough saved up, we just need a house to buy. Granted buying in the west can be difficult due to lack of supply anyway, but we are so tired of this entire experience. There are a good few run down small properties available that we are not interested in. Ideally we want to buy a house we’ll be in for a long time. Settle down, have kids etc.
We have been in 3 serious bidding wars with a 4th currently happening and that’s the one I want to rant about specifically.
We were some of the first people to view the property and we made it very clear to the EA at the viewing that we liked it and wanted to put a bid on it. We knew it was under priced so to show we were serious, we put in a bid of 5k over asking. Then over the course of a few days, I contacted them again to see if there were any other offers for them to turn around to say yes there are a few people bidding and it’s now up to 15k over asking. I was annoyed that they wouldn't tell us since we put in the starting bid and made it clear we wanted the house. A day later, they then tell us that the current bid is now 20k over asking and that they will be showing the house to more people and taking offers for another 3-4 weeks and then have a ‘final offers’ day. Fast forward 2 weeks and we are the highest bid at 65k over asking. We ring the EA and are given a run down of what will happen during the final offers day. Basically it’s a public auction.
Then, we get sent a picture by a family member of an ad in a local newspaper for this house with it saying that the current bid is 2k above ours. Bearing in mind this ad would have to have been sent in to the paper BEFORE our last bid was even acknowledged…
I emailed them the photo and asked for some clarity as to the actual current offer and they confirmed the current offer was the one in the newspaper. They said and I quote ‘we don’t send out updates for every offer on the property’.
In the meantime they are still doing viewings and the house is now 75k above asking and we’ve until Friday to wait for final offers day. This is now getting very close to our max budget and we are so disheartened at this point.
I understand the estate agents want as much money as possible for the seller. But this is so exhausting from a buyer's perspective. I am so sick of chasing EAs for updates or even to get viewings. And houses out here going for so much more than asking is actually disgusting. I just want to buy a damn house!!!!!