a younger member of my family is looking to fly the nest and buy his first house. he's found a property, and, slightly against my advice, offered the asking price because he really wants it. the estate agents have told him that they have one other offer that is slightly higher.

unfortunately for them, we know of the other person who's made an offer, and she's pissed off that our side have made a higher offer than her !! assuming that she's not being less than truthful, how should we proceed ?

my missus wants to go in all guns blazing and basically string the agent up, but i'm thinking that perhaps pointing out the error of his ways may be a useful tool in future negotiations.

what do the panel think ??

So your relative has offered the asking and the agents have lied to your relative and the other bidder? Is that right?

If so I'd do some digging to see if the agent has broken any rules.

I have no way of knowing whether my experience is commonplace but here's what happened: I was getting 3 valuations of my property to settle with my ex. One of the estate agents (some young flash types) said they had a potential buyer so I agreed to meet him to go along with it all. I had a chat with the bloke and told him that I was probably wasting his time because I was unlikely to be selling but was just trying to get an idea of the value of the house. He told me that he would offer £x. A few hours later the flash young estate agent phoned me and told me that the bloke had made an offer of £y (£30,000 less than the bloke had said he'd offer) but that they had told him it was too low and they'd got him to agree to offer £x. I burst out laughing and that was that, but a lesson learned for me.