Buying a Property? #Ghost_Offers

Buying a property is an exciting, and quite often a stressful experience. Exciting because you are going to own a house or condo. You check a real estate listing, see so many properties, decide which one are you going to see, and your heart stuck with one of them. Of coarse, you start dreaming about how would you create a coziness, what would you change or renovate. And finally, time to put an offer has approached. Here a stressful experience's come.

I would like to share with you our experience of buying a condo.
We live in a Great Vancouver area. Starting looking for our new home to live we were warned that the spring-beginning of summer time is very "hot" in terms of the quantity of buyers on the real estate market, and the market more like an auction. The good property gets somebody who offers more money.
The first our offer didn't go through because my husband didn't want to increase the offer. As we were told, except our offer there was one more. 

When the time came to put another offer our realtor  suggested to develop a strategy. He recommended to prepare at least 2 offers, and we agreed. According to the listing the price of our future condo was $360 000. The firs document with an offer of $350 000 we prepared in case if there was no other offer placed in. The second document with an offer of $365 000 we prepared in case if there was another offer. The third, and the last one, document we prepared  with an offer of $370 000 if there were more than 1 offer.

The seller's real estate agent told us she accepted offers on Tuesday until 4pm. Our agent contacted her before to figure out if there are any offers already, and she texted back that she had an offer. Our realtor informed us that there was going to be a competition, the seller has an offer, and we had to make our decision considering the fact that we had only one shot. My husband and I really liked that place and wanted to have it, so, we decided to put the offer with a higher price $370 000, which is $10 000 more than an original price. However, my husband told to our realtor that putting this price he wanted to know for sure there was another offer, and he was going to check it if our offer would be accepted. 

After awhile our agent called us and said: "Hey guys. The seller agent got back to me and told your offer was accepted. BUT, when I asked her about my client's willing to have a conformation of existing another offer she said that there was no another one. I reminded her about the text message where she wrote about the other offer..."
To make the long story shorter, the dishonest agent was using this trick to drive up bids and create false time pressure. She lied, she tried to increase the price of the property to get more commission. It was illegal. By doing that she could lose the commission, license, and reputation her & the company she works for. In fact she put herself in a dangerous situation. To fix it she offered us to start everything over. 

We sent our first offer, which was $350 000. Her reply was $357 000, then we offered $355 000, which was accepted. Thanks to my husband's suspicion we saved $15 000!  

Thereby, buying a property it’s important to protect yourself. The best thing you can do to avoid being pressured by a multiple offer situation (real ones or otherwise) is to know the realistic market value of the home, decide your cutoff price before you start negotiating, and don’t waver under pressure. There is a legal way to check the existence of other offers. Keep calm, and you’ll avoid overpaying.