WA Property purchase-should I use conveyancer to make offer?

My nephew and I recently made an offer to buy a property in Perth. We encountered the following difficulties during the process:

1. The selling agent kept giving us excuses when we asked for their O & A form and any annexures such as REIWA Annexure for Structural Reports (We wanted to review all the clauses and strike out any that we did not agree with).
2. We tried to put the offer as "Building inspection to our satisfaction" but the Estate Agent insisted we fill in the REIWA style annexure.
3. We also tried putting an offer as "first and final offer valid for 3 business days". The agent told us the seller was out of town and it would be unfair on her to try and contact them under the circumstances. We eventually relented but did inform her that we definitely would not be improving on our initial offer.

From our experience we felt that the agent was calling all the shots and was in full control of negotiations. This got us thinking....in future how can we develop a good system with agents that:

1. Wrests control from then to me
2. Does not unduly unruffle the agents feathers and create ill will right from the onset.

Would love to hear from your experiences so that in future I can be better prepared!

 

Sorry..I posted the above before completing....

One of the things I was thinking about doing is asking the selling agent to deal directly with my conveyancer who would write up the offer on my behalf....though I am not sure how this works or how commonly it is done.

Would love to hear of people's strategies when writing up offers.

 

This often depends on the market to be honest. If it's buyers market and the house has been for sale for a while or it's a hard sell then you should straight away have the upper hand.
If they are going to have multiple offers they might start playing games to see what will happen.
Know the rules and stick to your descision. You have posted that she has been able to get you to change your offer already giving them the upper hand. Don't get emotionally to attached (unless it your dream house and you're willing to do anything to get it). You said 3 day offer and they got you to back down. Put the offer on the table and stick to it and see what happens. Often when you can walk away from the deal, if they need it sold they will start chasing you. But sometimes you will never have the upper hand.

Best of luck!

 

Generally you will always have to deal with the REA but you can have a lawyer help you write the offer so that it covers your situation and what you want to achieve. The REA cannot force you do put anything you don't want. If you want to put "to your satisfaction" on a building report, you may, but it generally just gives you ability to crash the deal not have the items fixed that are non structural.

If the Buyer is out of town there is not much you can do about that and have to work around as you did.

 

I always get one of three excuses.
1) seller is out of town or overseas
2) seller is not feeling well so they have to wait
3) seller needs to speak to their accountant

My opinion
1) if this is true (big if) then they would still have access to phone or email or Facebook. Nearly everyone is contactable in this era without having to wait days for them to get back in the country.

2) Same as above. They can send offer electronically and get an answer. Unless I was hospitalised I would tell the agent my response.

3)if this is true (another big if) then this discussion should have been done before the house was listed for sale.

When I was the vendor I made sure i was always contactable. This is just a delay to get more offers or to make you nervous and try and increase your offer.

P.s I'm not joking about the multiple times I have head the above varients of the above 3 stories.

 

Don't talk, just make a written offer.

 

Definitely not! Learn to do it yourself.

 

It's just spin. I have negotiated at least 5 property purchases in Perth and just ignore what the agent says and put in my written offer. If they winge, and they usually do, I just remind them they are legally obliged to presen all offers. While strictly not legally true, it usually gets the job done