Your property questions answered.

Agents responding to bids

Do estate agents have to get back to would-be buyers within a specific period of time? I ask this out of frustration. I am interested in a particular house and have phoned the auctioneer with a bid which is at the asking price. Nearly 10 days have passed and the agent has yet to get back to me to tell me if my bid has been successful. I have phoned nearly every day and am getting the run around from various secretaries and assistants. All of this is enormously frustrating. Surely agents have to respond to a bid?

You would think so, wouldn't you? But the bad news for buyers is that they don't. All agents are obliged to do in a private treaty sale is put any realistic bids to the vendor. While their self-policed codes require them to act "professionally" they don't have to get back to you, the would-be buyer. This clearly is a recipe for frustration and it might help if they were, in some way, officially obliged to contact you in a formal way within, say, 48 hours to inform you of the progress of your bid. Not to necessarily give you a final yes or no but just to let you know in writing what is happening.

You have bid the asking price so clearly you are not messing and the agent should have put your bid to the house seller. And it's most likely that he has. The biggest problem, clearly, is the lack of communication. It could be that the seller has your bid and is considering it, or that the agent has not been able, for the usual variety of reasons, to contact the seller. The least you could have expected is the decency of a phone call. In the vast majority of cases agents do respond to bids, either immediately by being able to tell bidders that they are not talking the same sort of money as the seller, or by taking the bid to the seller and responding accordingly.

There really is little officially you can do. Give the agent one last chance. Put your bid in writing and request a reply by return. Is the property still lived in by the owner? Drop a note in saying that you have bid the asking price and the bid is with their estate agent.

You have nothing to lose. And don't just complain to us. Write to the Office of Consumer Affairs and outline your case. It can't do anything immediately but it's important that sloppy professional practice is noted.

Taking the kitchen with us

We have an IKEA free-standing kitchen which we want to take with us when we sell. At what point do we tell buyers? We know it will photograph really well but should we put a picture of it in the brochure as it really shows off the space?

Anything you intend taking with you that would normally be part of the sale should be stated explicitly from the beginning in writing in the brochure with instructions to the agent to tell viewers - above all, don't include a photograph of the kitchen, as that could be seriously misleading. No one presumes that, if they see a sofa in a photograph, then it will come with the sale, but a kitchen is a different matter. In these situations, it might be worth your while saying that the kitchen is open to negotiation.

Removing a kitchen, even a free-standing one, is a lot of hassle, and it might turn out that whoever buys your house is prepared to pay for it, which in turn would fund a new trip over to IKEA and a fresh start for you.Send your queries to Property Questions, The Irish Times, 10-16 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2 or email propertyquestions@irish-times.ie.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to respond to all questions. The above is a representative sample of queries received. This column is a readers' service and is not intended to replace professional advice. No individual correspondence will be entered into.