Three Counter-Moves When a Real Estate Agent Says 'Someone Offered More'

"We've received a higher offer. If you can come up a little, it's yours."

If you've ever tried to buy a property in Australia, you've heard some version of this line. Maybe on the phone, maybe via text, maybe face-to-face after an open inspection. It's the single most common negotiation tactic selling agents use — and it works spectacularly well on unprepared buyers.

Here's the problem: sometimes it's true. Sometimes there genuinely is a competing offer. And sometimes it's complete fabrication designed to push you above your limit.

The agent does this forty, fifty, maybe a hundred times a year. They process dozens of transactions annually, handle thousands of potential buyers, and have refined their delivery to an art form. You, as a buyer, might purchase three or four properties in your entire lifetime. The experience gap is enormous.

I've been on both sides of this interaction across 350+ transactions. I know which tells to look for, which responses extract useful information, and which shut down the pressure without losing the deal. Today I'm going to give you three counter-moves that work. I've tested them repeatedly. They've saved my clients tens of thousands of dollars.

Counter-move 1: Introduce non-price conditions

When the agent tells you there's a higher offer, most buyers do one of two things: they either panic and increase their price, or they freeze and say nothing. Both responses hand control to the agent.

Instead, try this. Acknowledge that you can't match the higher offer, then pivot to non-price conditions.

"I appreciate that. I probably can't go higher on price. But I'm wondering — could we look at a longer settlement period? Would the vendor consider leaving the furniture? What about extending the cooling-off period by a few days?"

These questions do two things simultaneously.

First, they test the agent's reaction. If the agent engages with your conditions — starts discussing settlement timelines, considers the furniture request, explores the cooling-off extension — that's a strong signal. It means they're still trying to make a deal with you. If there truly was a dominant competing offer at a significantly higher price, the agent wouldn't waste time negotiating your non-price conditions. They'd simply say, "Sorry, the other buyer has a cleaner offer" and move on.

Second, if the agent shows impatience and immediately steers back to price — "Forget the furniture, we need to talk numbers" — that also tells you something. Either the competing offer is real and your price is genuinely too low, or the agent is exclusively focused on maximising commission and doesn't want to engage on terms.

Either way, you've gained information without committing any additional money. That's what good negotiation looks like — gathering data while keeping your position flexible.

I used this exact approach on a Frankston deal last year. The agent claimed there was an offer at $750,000 on a property we'd offered $720,000 for. I asked about settlement timing and whether the vendor would include the workshop equipment in the shed. The agent spent fifteen minutes discussing workshop equipment logistics. There was no $750,000 offer. We settled at $730,000.

Counter-move 2: Ask if they have anything else

This one is genuinely my secret weapon. When I deploy it properly, it reveals the agent's hand almost every time.

After the agent tells you about the competing offer and you've expressed that you might not be able to match it, say this:

"That's a shame. Look, do you have any other properties coming up that might suit us? We're still actively looking."

Pay very close attention to what happens next.

If the agent starts helping you look at alternatives — suggests other listings, mentions upcoming properties, offers to send you new stock — you should be concerned. This agent has mentally moved on from selling you this property. They believe the competing offer is real and better than yours. They're now trying to capture you as a buyer for a different property. Your current offer is probably genuinely too low.

If the agent says something like "No no, let's not get distracted — I think we can still make this work" — that's your tell. The agent doesn't want to lose you as a buyer for this specific property. Which means either the competing offer doesn't exist, or it's not as strong as they implied. If a better offer was truly locked in, the rational agent response would be to take it and try to sell you something else for a separate commission.

This works because selling agents are incentive-driven. They earn commission on settled sales. If they have a genuine higher offer, helping you find another property generates a potential second commission. It's win-win for them. The only scenario where they'd resist helping you find alternatives is when they need you to stay focused on this deal — because you might be their best (or only) real buyer.

I can't count how many times this simple question has revealed that the "higher offer" was a phantom. On a Narre Warren deal, the agent claimed multiple offers above $800,000 on a property we'd offered $738,000 for. I asked about alternatives. He practically begged me to stay focused on the current property. We bought at $738,000. The bank valued it at $772,000 four months later.

Counter-move 3: Always submit a formal written offer

This sounds obvious but I'm constantly stunned by how many buyers fail to do it.

When the agent quotes a competing offer that's above your maximum — say they claim someone offered $900,000 and your absolute ceiling is $840,000 — many buyers simply walk away. They think, "Well, I can't compete at that level, no point even trying."

Wrong. Always — always — put your maximum offer in writing. Email it to the agent. State your price, your conditions, your settlement terms, and your deadline. Make it formal and unambiguous.

Here's why this matters.

The competing offer might fall through. Finance conditions fail. Building inspections reveal problems. Buyers get cold feet. Vendors change their minds about terms. In competitive property markets, approximately 15-20% of accepted offers don't proceed to settlement. If your written offer is sitting in the agent's inbox when their preferred buyer pulls out, you become the fallback.

I've personally witnessed this scenario dozens of times. A client was told the property was "going to someone at $850,000" but submitted a written offer at $820,000 anyway. The $850,000 buyer's finance was declined. The agent called us back. We settled at $825,000 — $25,000 below what the vendor thought they were getting.

The cost of submitting a written offer is zero. The cost of not submitting one — when you could have bought the property — is potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in future growth you missed.

Another dimension: a formal written offer creates a paper trail. If the agent later claims they "never received" an offer or "couldn't reach you," the email timestamp tells the real story. Agents are licensed professionals bound by estate agents legislation. They have a legal obligation to present all written offers to the vendor. A verbal expression of interest carries no such obligation.

Send the email. Every single time.

When the competing offer is genuine

I want to be fair here. Not every claim of a competing offer is a bluff. Agents do receive multiple genuine offers, particularly in supply-constrained markets like Melbourne's southeast where vacancy is below 1.5% and buyer demand is intense.

How do you tell the difference?

Genuine competing offers usually come with specific details. The agent might say, "We've received an offer at $X with Y settlement terms and Z conditions." Fabricated offers tend to be vague — "someone has offered more" with no specifics.

Genuine situations also tend to have time pressure attached to real vendor deadlines, not artificial urgency. "The vendor wants to decide by Friday because they've already committed to buying their next property" is plausible. "You need to decide in the next hour" is almost always pressure.

If you've applied all three counter-moves and concluded the competing offer is probably real, you have two choices: increase your offer to your genuine maximum (not a dollar more), or walk away. Both are rational responses. What's not rational is exceeding your maximum because of emotional pressure.

The market will always have another property. Overpaying for this one because an agent successfully pressured you costs real money — money that could have been the deposit contribution for your next investment.

These three techniques are the basics. There are far more advanced variations — the way you time your responses, the conditions you structure, the information you reveal versus withhold. But for a buyer negotiating without a professional representative, these three will materially improve your outcomes.

And if you want someone who does this full-time, who has refined these methods across hundreds of deals, who knows the agents and their patterns — that's precisely what a buyer's agent does. We've averaged $30,000-$80,000 in savings per transaction against initial vendor expectations. That's not marketing. That's documented transaction data.