Time limit on bids?

Ok, I have another question...
When we went to put the bid in the other day, our agent said nothing about putting a time limit on it - the books I read mentioned that you should do this so that you don't give the seller lots of time to mull it over and wait for a better offer. It made sense but we didn't end asking about it at all. Well, after we put in the offer, we spoke to some people who were all like You have to have a time limit on it. So, we hear back from the agent (they were very quick, within 24 hours - that the sellers counter offered so, today we re-counter offered. DH told the agent we wanted to put it in that we wanted an answer by Wednesday morning. Well, the agent said that you don't get to put in a time limit of you are offering below the asking. Is this right?
Sorry for all the questions, but I am really starting to wonder if we are doing this all completely wrong!!

I don't think there are official rules on this. Your agent should want to move the process along as quick as possible. The way we did it is that we made an offer and the lady sat on it for a weekend (other people had seen the house) We called our agent adn told her we didn't want our bid sitting on the table if she was just waiting for more offers. We reiterated our selling points (downpayment amount, flexability on closing, having nothing to sell etc.) and that we wanted to pull our offer as of Monday am. This got a quick response with an accept as they didn't want us to walk. FYI we paid under the asking price. It is a gamble but you can pull your offer or put a deadline on it if you want!!!

Good Luck!

Unfortunatly nothing protects you until you are in Contract...

You can explain to them that you want to hear by Wed or you are withdrawing your bid, but then you run the risk of loosing the house.. Even if they accept your bid there is nothing protecting you then either.. like I had the inspection done and lets just say after I laid out the 470.0 for the inspection and they got a higher offer they could accpt it.. Once you are in CONTRACT then you are protected... I think the system STINKS...

Good point Suzanne. We had a neighbor draft a contract and send a check to the ladies lawyer (they were offering a lot more money)

She could have accepted it but we got lucky. People are ruthless. And Suzanne is right the whole thing stinks!

Yeah, that does stink!! I hope we don't end up in a situation like that. Jen, that's cool though that those people did honor your bid!! That was pretty shady of the neighbor!
Well, I guess if we don't hear anything, maybe we will say that we're going to take the offer off the table by Wednesday or something. I wasn't sure you could even do that. I think they'll probably decide sooner anyway, but if this isn't gonna go through, I think we'd rather just start from scratch with a new agent and just say forget about it.

Thanks for your help!!!

They aren't going to want you to walk away. They are just trying to squeeze as much $$$ as they can. You can also tell your broker that if they counter you won't go any higher. She may push the seller to accept.

Remember it is all a gamble!!!

Heres my experience..

The owners of the home I am buying wanted an OUTRAGEOUS amount of money for the house. I bid 30K less than what they wanted because the house needs a tremendous amount of work. So they didnt accept my offer, and they had a couple of open houses and I guess they had no other offers so about a month and a half later low and behold the Real Estate calls me back and wants to know if I am still interested.. So I say yes and he wants me to come up 10K from my original bid and i said NO WAY.. well it took FOREVER to hear back from them., so I told the agent that I wanted to know by END OF BUSINESS friday or I would possibly be putting an offer in on another house.. well they eventutally came down to my price and now we are in contract

UGGH!! I hate gambling (wouldn't even sit at a table when I was in Las Vegas )
And I hate negotiating. I am terrible at it!! I crumble under pressure. But, THIS time we're gonna try to stand our ground - or at least near our ground...sort of, maybe?
This is where our agent seems to fall short - he's the one that made us think our offer would be laughed at right away - in fact we were going to go a little lower originally, but then he made us think that we must be out of our minds. When he told me their counter offer, he made it seem like we HAD to accept (I mean, maybe we did and maybe now we don't have a house) or they would just tell us forget it. But, as we were 1 of 4 bids and the only one who I guess came close to what they want, this leads me to believe that we're not as crazy as we might have thought.
So, I don't have all that much confidence that he will be pushing anything for us.