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A comment on Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes. Parent comment

Re:Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes by jackyinger on Thursday April 07, 2022 @02:10PM (#30948247)
The lack of transparency makes these deals ripe for fraud. I have heard anecdotes from people I trust of their realtor offering to generate a fake offer (by soliciting one from a third party) to drive up the escalation clause.

Where there is money and little oversight there is bound to be fraud. It grinds my gears to think about this because I bought a house and the escalation clause went to the maximum. Now do you think that was purely coincidence?

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Re:Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes by josho on Thursday April 07, 2022 @03:19PM (#30949145)
If you have a good realtor they will confirm the competing offer exists.

Eg. my realtor called up the selling realtor and asked for the name of the realtor that submitted a competing offer. My realtor called the competing realtor to confirm they had a client that submitted an offer.

Yes, of course the two other realtors could conspire together. But, now instead of one dodgy realtor you have 2 and the probabilities go down further.

Is there fraud, I'm sure there is. But, I don't think it's a significant factor in the market.

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Re:Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes by Spivak on Thursday April 07, 2022 @03:33PM (#30949319)
Escalation clauses are dumb anyway. If you tell me “I’m willing to pay you up to 100k for your house” then my offer just became $100k.
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Re:Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes by lotsofpulp on Thursday April 07, 2022 @04:55PM (#30950245)
You can require proof of competing offers in your escalation clause.
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Re:Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes by charcircuit on Thursday April 07, 2022 @07:46PM (#30951681)
Just get the realtor or some random person to bid $99,999.99
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