Victoria G.

I was a cash buyer and I was the only bidder, I watched the particular property go through 2 auction cycles and bid on the 3rd. I did not meet the reserve they were looking for, they emailed me with their counter bid which I accepted. It then took them 5 days to actually confirm that I was in fact getting the house, all the time the house was still being offered for counter offers with no personal communication, I realised my bid was probably going through when I saw the listing as withdrawn on realtor.com, it took them 2 more days to email me that I was going to close on the property. They then called me and arranged to close on a particular day of my choosing, but they never sent me the paperwork on time, it came a couple of days later with no explanation or apology. They do seem very focused on making you sweat at every stage of the process, they email you in the middle of the night and expect you to jump when they say jump, but it certainly doesn't work the other way round. I did find that they answered my email questions and also a couple of phone calls too, so I personally had no problem with communications.
I have been watching a few properties go through several cycles of bidding, It seems fairly easy to work out what the reserve the banks are looking for, by a simple search on zillow to find out what the bank actually paid at auction. So that gives you a ballpark figure.
Altogether not a horrible experience, because I was a cash buyer, but I can imagine throwing in a financial institution into the mix would make it even more fraught.
I did in the end get my house, now I have to get the previous owner to leave...