The saga of making an offer

northsouth1983 · 16 December 2017 at 3:46PM

Odd one, I found the perfect house in terms of size and location after months of searching. It was on the market for £250K but needed a lot of superficial work. I offered £240K which was turned down which was counter offer of £244K from the vendor. I offered this which was briefly accepted. 2hrs later the agent came back to me saying they wanted £255K or they are taking it off the market and will live there for the next couple of years while they refurbish it!!

I asked if anyone else was interested or had offered on it and the answer was no. I am absolutely shocked that an offer of £244K can be accepted and then 2 hours later the vendor takes it off the market unless £255K is paid. In strikes me someone must have done their sums wrong on their side..... The house would only be worth £255k in top condition and are in cloud coo-coo land if they think I would pay that!

Typhoon2000 · 16 December 2017 at 3:58PM

Sounds like it worth more to them than it is to you, and don't really need to move. Just move one, no point on dwelling on these things.

Davesnave · 16 December 2017 at 4:04PM

I don't think having second thoughts is uncommon. Sometimes plans are ill-thought out.

The very first house we wanted to buy when leaving our old one involved a couple putting their property up at 'offers over,' but clearly the offers weren't good enough. They intended to divorce, so they probably had an idea of the sum needed to achieve this separation without too much hardship.

Anyway, after instructing a second agent and having no more luck there, they took it off the market.

The last we heard was when the first agent informed us, "They've gone to Relate."

Subsequent movement in the local market in the 12 years since then suggests they got it right. We could no longer contemplate buying that property.

Margot123 · 16 December 2017 at 4:20PM

We viewed a property listed at £115k, and offered the full asking price (it was well worth the price) which was accepted.
Some 3 weeks down the line, the agent rang to say the lady had had second thoughts about moving in with her sister as they had fallen out, and had cancelled the sale.
Six years later she is still living in it.
Vendors' situations change for all sorts of reasons, that don't always make sense to the buyer!

phoebe1989seb · 16 December 2017 at 6:15PM

Apart from my recent thread that catalogues our attempts to buy a fairly unusual property (offered the 'guide price' a couple of days after it came on the market, only for the vendors - probate sale - to put the guide price up by £35k four days later

) and despite increasing our offer considerably we lost out on, we have also experience of vendors that don't seem to want to sell......

Example 1 - At Easter we were getting ready to market our own house and were perusing Right Move for interesting properties (rural, with land etc) when we spotted a place we liked the look of. It was a complete renovation project of a Georgian cottage. The blurb stated that it required major work. We drove a couple of hours to explore the area without arranging a viewing as we weren't proceedable.

On arrival there was a guy on a tractor outside. Turned out he was the vendor and he asked if we'd like to take a look inside which we did. The property was riddled with huge fit-your-hand-inside cracks and he admitted it had subsidence/required underpinning. At that point the property was priced at £210k, which reflected its condition. We would have been interested but for the proximity of a neighbouring property.

Fast forward a few weeks and he increased the price to £350k :eek:

In the intervening months he has dropped it to £260k, then increased it to £310k. Currently it's on at £250k. This was a single, middle-aged guy who lived elsewhere. Not sure what his thought process is.......

Example 2 - In mid-October, now SSTC ourselves, we saw a house on RM. It had been for sale since April. Called to make appointment to view but were told it was no longer available. It was briefly removed from RM only to re-appear at a slightly higher price a couple of weeks later. We had decided it was in the wrong location, then one day had been to view another house and were passing close to where this one is situated. We thought we'd try to find it - very rural, up a dirt track, etc - so stopped at a local shop to ask directions. "Think he took it off the market", the lady in the shop said, but told us how to find it anyway. Having found it - complete with 'for sale' board - we called the EA to see if there was any chance it was still available, only to be told the elderly vendors had had so many offers they were making up their minds which to accept and weren't taking any more viewings.

Two months on and it's still on RM/Zoopla, not marked as sold/under offer. DH wanted to try again for a viewing, but I suggested they obviously don't really want to sell......

moneyistooshorttomention · 16 December 2017 at 6:29PM

I think we're all assuming that vendors have made a very logical decision to sell (after weeks or months of careful thought) and then done lots of careful analysing as to exactly which price to put the property on the market for.....:cool:

Well some of us do:) - and then there's the others/the overly impulsive ones that don't think things through that logically:cool:.

I frequently tell myself "If we all thought logically (oh roll on the day - please) then the planet wouldnt be over-populated and steadily getting worse and gawd-alone-knows how many wars are being fought on it right at this moment (but I do know we will be up into double figures on that one and wouldnt be surprised if its triple figures)".

Put like that - expecting all those that put their properties on their market to be thoroughly logical/have thought about it carefully is a rather Big Ask:cool: it would appear.

Davesnave · 16 December 2017 at 6:58PM

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I think we're all assuming that vendors have made a very logical decision to sell

I'm not assuming anything.

One-off properties are very hard to value, so I don't think I could accurately predict a price for ours within, say, £50k. Given that we've walked away from a property over a difference with the vendor of less than half that amount, there's certainly room for getting the market wrong.....logically.

I'd also say phoebe's vendors could have looking for a price war, which can be an effective way to shift a property in a slow market. Again, logical, if not very nice when no one's up front about it. A better way is to go to sealed bids as soon as enough interest has been shown.

PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING

The saga of making an offer

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free