find out about refused offers

chewmylegoff

daveyliver wrote: »

Hi, Iv seen recently a lot of houses being under offer and then becoming available again.

If you phoned the EA would they tell you what offers had been refused on the property or would they just want you to make a offer, I ask because I dont want to waste time viewing houses when the seller has refused what I consider to be a fair offer?

many thanks in advance

my personal experience is that estate agents will usually tell you about any offer which has been rejected but will normally not discuss the size of an offer which has not yet been formally rejected.

also if a sale has collapsed they will tell you what it was previously agreed at.

obviously there is no way of knowing whether they are telling the truth or not.

chickmug

chewmylegoff wrote: »

my personal experience is that estate agents will usually tell you about any offer which has been rejected but will normally not discuss the size of an offer which has not yet been formally rejected.

also if a sale has collapsed they will tell you what it was previously agreed at.

obviously there is no way of knowing whether they are telling the truth or not.

In my case (EA) your 1st para is true. Your 2nd para no way would we let on as we have many cases where a sale has fallen apart and the eventual sale has gone through for a much higher figure. To have told that buyer, of the lower figure accepted, would be in sellers worst interests.

As for 'telling the truth' I am happy to sit a lie dectector test but know many EA's would have regular fails.

not_loaded

To have told that buyer, of the lower figure accepted, would be in sellers worst interests.

Appreciate what you say, but it does happen. When we were looking around a few years ago, we had an EA phone us. The house was fresh on the market that day. He ‘knew’ the seller would take a drop of £30,000 so would we like to view? So he was stitching up his seller on day one. He actually left that message on the answerphone. I should have posted the cassette through the seller’s letter box! I imagine he was desperate and wanted the sale before one of his colleagues sold it. The £30k drop wouldn’t make a huge dent in his commission, as opposed to NOT selling anything that month.

chewmylegoff wrote: »

my personal experience is that estate agents will usually tell you about any offer which has been rejected but will normally not discuss the size of an offer which has not yet been formally rejected.
also if a sale has collapsed they will tell you what it was previously agreed at.
obviously there is no way of knowing whether they are telling the truth or not.

Oh, how true! If you intend to rely on EA verbal statements, put it in writing to them along the lines of: ‘your Mr Smith informed me on (date) that (doubted statement) is the case. I will shortly be making my offer with this in mind. Please confirm that this is actually the case’.

I thought that if a property is marked "under offer", rather than "SSTC"", then this means that the seller has accepted an offer, but the would-be buyer is not yet in a position to proceed i.e. has not sold their own property.

I dunno about anyone else, but showing properties under offer/SSTC only means one thing to me. Do you want to get into a bidding war on this? Otherwise, why are they keeping it on Rightmove or wherever, if they don’t want interest and further offers?

carolt

Some EA's tell, some don't. Some even tell the truth.

Around the time they introduced the house price websites, we had been looking at buying various properties; when they went public, we discovered a lot of little fibs the EA's had told to talk up the price of a street. In one case, I knew he was lying, as I knew the person who'd bought the house!

So even if a 'kind' EA tells you that the vendor previously accepted a full asking price offer, I'd take it with a pinch of salt, and offer what you'd be prepared to pay; buyers call the tune now.

chewmylegoff

chickmug wrote: »

Your 2nd para no way would we let on as we have many cases where a sale has fallen apart and the eventual sale has gone through for a much higher figure. To have told that buyer, of the lower figure accepted, would be in sellers worst interests.

may be not in the seller's interest, but the EA needs volume of sales more than it needs to ensure the seller gets the best price possible, in the current market with EAs going out of business it's not surprising that some of them are willing to tell you a previously agreed price in the interests of getting a deal done asap - it's happened to me twice with different agents in the last month.

chickmug

not_loaded wrote: »

I dunno about anyone else, but showing properties under offer/SSTC only means one thing to me. Do you want to get into a bidding war on this? Otherwise, why are they keeping it on Rightmove or wherever, if they don’t want interest and further offers?

As an EA I fund this comment really interesting because most EA's just don't take the time to ask themselves are they speaking plain English. You are confused so EAs ought to rephrase or do something about the confusion they are causing.

not_loaded

I don’t think it’s confusing at all.

“Hey Mr B, here’s something still on the market that Mr A has made an offer on. Do you like it? Enough to try and beat Mr A?”

Crystal clear to me.

beerhunter

dander wrote: »

If houses appear as "under offer" on rightmove that would generally mean the offer's been accepted, rather than just an offer's been made. If they pop back up as for sale, probably the buyer got cold feet and dropped out.

Not so according to rightmove... see http://www.rightmove.co.uk/template/publicsite,generic,BuyStatusDescription.vm

Under Offer
A property is under offer when a homebuyer has made a formal offer to purchase the property but the homeowner has not confirmed whether to accept.
If the offer is rejected then the property remains on the market until the next formal offer is made at which point the homeowner must again decide whether to accept the offer or reject it.
If the offer is accepted then it becomes 'Sold Subject to Contract' (Sold STC).

Sold STC and Sold STCM
Sold 'Subject to Contract' (STC) means that the homeowner has accepted an offer from a buyer but the paperwork is not yet complete.
You can still enquire about a Sold STC property as the sale is not complete until the signed contracts are exchanged. Technically the property is still available.
It may still be worth contacting the estate agent to discuss the strength of the accepted offer, particularly as there is no legal obligation on homeowner or homebuyer to complete the sale. On average about 15% of Sold STC properties come back on the market after the sale has failed to proceed.
The house buying and selling system in Scotland is slightly different in that once offers are made they are legally binding if accepted; there is no 'subject to contract' stage. However the concluding paperwork (known as missives) may in rare cases fall through hence we use Sold Subject to Conclusion of Missives (Sold STCM).

Whether EAs use the same terminology (or realise there is a difference ) is another thing.

chickmug

beerhunter wrote: »

Not so according to rightmove... see http://www.rightmove.co.uk/template/publicsite,generic,BuyStatusDescription.vm



Whether EAs use the same terminology (or realise there is a difference ) is another thing.

You will find that many EA's feel that SSTC & UO both have the same meaning. Sorry as an EA but I don't regard Rightmoves words as the gospel:D

dander

I can't imagine any estate agent carefully going into a computer system and changing a property status to "under offer" when a prospective buyer makes an offer, then going back in again when the offer is rejected. Then logging on again when the buyer ups their offer... etc They'd have to be REALLY bored!

Logically, I think we can be pretty sure that status only gets changed when the offers are accepted.