Week 3: The dirty tricks sellers play to push up real estate prices

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In Week 3 of the Buyer Diaries, our Winnipeg bloggers decided to walk away from a house they liked because of the seller's pressure tactics.

Corey and Angela were considering making an offer but were told by the selling agent that the owners were taking the house off the market the next day, so it was now or never for a bid.

"We didn't want to feel pressured into making an offer on a house that we were not completely sure of," Corey wrote.

Several listings the couple looked at were priced low in an attempt to attract multiple bids, Corey said. When the bids didn't appear, however, the sellers put their prices up $25,000 to ward off low offers.

"I can't say that I have ever heard of a place where the price of a house goes up as a result of not getting an offer. It is like supply-and-demand in reverse," he wrote.

In Vancouver, Kristin posed a question to readers: What is a starter home?

At 33, she lamented, she has a 10-year professional career under her belt, but has spent most of that time living in dark basement apartments and small rental units.

"Do I still need to do the whole 'starter home' thing? Or can those 10+ years count as 'time served' and I can expect to move directly to a home that works for the stage of life that my family and I are actually in?"

And in Toronto, Carl wrote about the shortcomings of his own starter home, which he bought 10 years ago and has since outgrown.

He spent the weekend sifting through listings, but nothing appealed to him.

"Things seem to be cooling off (thankfully), but I wonder if the lack of depth available has something to do with that," he wrote.

We hope you're enjoying our Buyer Diaries feature and will continue to follow along with our bloggers. Please keep your comments coming.

For tips, stories, videos and live chats about what's going on in the real estate market, check out the Globe's Home Buying section for daily updates.