Unproceedable offer

owizard

Hi,

I am new to these forums. I am a first time buyer (No chain) with a ready mortgage. I have just placed an offer of £254,000 on a house, which is on the market for £270,000. However, the estate agent told me that there was a higher "unproceedable offer" and I had to match it or exceed it. They declined to disclose the so called unproceedable offer that I was supposed to match. They were not even prepared to forward my offer to the seller as it was not matching the unproceedable offer. The house has been on the market for at least six weeks. I am totally confused. I really liked the house and I can conclude the deal in a few weeks.

What kind of strategy should I adopt to get the house? I am willing to go up to £258,000. Any guidance will be deeply appreciated.

nmiah786

Unproceedable offer, what does that mean. I would have thought that it meant no offer, if they cant proceed with it!!

I also thought that the EA has a duty to inform the vendor of every offer, is it not illegal not to inform vendors of any offers, even if it is below the asking price.

I think the EA is trying to play you. Tell the EA that you want confirmation that your offer has been put forward to the vendor. HOW? I dont know!

Also a house is only worth however much you are willing to pay for it!

AndrewSmith

You must re-inforce that you are able to close the chain and proceed.

If you want to pay 258, tell the agent that this is on the condition that you have exclusivity to the property, ie it comes off the market and all future viewings are cancelled.

The easy way round finding out if the vendor has received you offers is to book a second viewing. Tell the agent that you want another thorough look around the property before you consider another offer. If you ask the agent to make this appointment for as late as possible (tell them you work late or something) example 7.30pm it is likely that it will be the owners that show you round. Especially as it is a second viewing. You will then have every opportunity to discuss your offer and conclude whether it was put forward (don't pressure the vendor though, just be very polite and ask "oh did they tell you we had offered?" and let the conversation go from there).

Tell the agent that you have viewed numerous houses in the area and that you are offering the most you can afford, and will instruct solicitors immediately on the offer being accepted.

If they still come back with a negative, don't be afraid to tell the agent you are walking away to offer elsewhere.

It is a buyers market out there right now with houses not moving. An offer that is not proceedable is as good as a car with no wheels.

Hope this helps, and come back for more help.

Andy

owizard

Thanks a lot. I will keep you informed.

lush_walrus

Andrew has given you all of the info you need to know, but just to confirm an unproceedable offer is exactly as it sounds it is an offer that has been put forward which has not been accepted. Ask the EA why the offer is unproceedable, my guess is that the offer has come from a potential buyer who has not sold, and therefore is not able to proceed.

The EA is trying to explain to you that as the vendors have this offer on the table they will only proceed with another buyer if that offer is matched, as perhaps the vendors at this stage are willing to wait for the other buyers to be in a position to proceed. Therefore the EAs view is that it is pointless to put forward an offer lower than this as the vendors will not accept. However legally an EA has to put forward ALL offers to the vendor so the EA should never state that they will not put any offer forward.

The EA is not obliged to tell you the other persons offer, but as Andy has said if you get to talk to the vendors (unless they have been briefed by the EA which a good EA will do) they are very likely to spill the beans. IF not try to get the EAs on your side, and they may well reveal it to you, especially if they feel that you are a serious buyer.

Try Andy's suggestions first and good luck.

AndrewSmith

@ LushWalrus,

Lovely to see someone from the same old school as me (even though you are from the Estate Agency side )

Do you reakon we may have done this before a couple of times?

Happy new year to you by the way.

Andy

:beer:

John_M_Business

The EA is LEGALLY BOUND to inform the Vendor in writing of the offer. You must stress this to the EA - even if rejection comes back.

If you're not sure, then you can always go to the house, slip a letter under the door telling the owner of your offer - it will then get them on your side, rather than the EA as they are likely to be very unimpressed if their EA had not at least informed them of the offer.

Explain your situation too... perhaps they are looking for a quick sale. I regret trusting my agent in previous negotiations, and even if they do get their commission, a quick direct conversation with the Vendor should result in either a definite 'no' or some kind of possible compromise.

EAs seem to feed off uncertaintly and disinformation. Don't let them draw it out.

sarah_elton

Completely agree with John - when my mum was buying she put in an offer, and hadn't heard anything after a week. She was about to phone the EA when she out of the blue bumped into the vendor in a supermarket. She mentioned the offer and the vendor was shocked - they were in a position where they were desperate to sell and the EA hadn't even put the offer forward.

They promptly changed EAs.

lush_walrus

AndrewSmith wrote:

@ LushWalrus,

Lovely to see someone from the same old school as me (even though you are from the Estate Agency side )

Do you reakon we may have done this before a couple of times?

Happy new year to you by the way.

Andy

:beer:

Hahaha, Yep much too often I think! Its always sods law that numerous offers come in on one property at the same time isnt it!

Happy New Year to you too, good to see you still knocking around I always seem to agree with your advice!

Sorry to go a bit off topic, but Im going to be looking for a bit of advice soon so expect a quick question via pm soon!

lush_walrus

John_M_Business wrote:

The EA is LEGALLY BOUND to inform the Vendor in writing of the offer. You must stress this to the EA - even if rejection comes back.

If you're not sure, then you can always go to the house, slip a letter under the door telling the owner of your offer - it will then get them on your side, rather than the EA as they are likely to be very unimpressed if their EA had not at least informed them of the offer.

Explain your situation too... perhaps they are looking for a quick sale. I regret trusting my agent in previous negotiations, and even if they do get their commission, a quick direct conversation with the Vendor should result in either a definite 'no' or some kind of possible compromise.

EAs seem to feed off uncertaintly and disinformation. Don't let them draw it out.

John, nearly correct but one thing to note is that in some cases vendors request not to be contacted in writing for offers below such and such level, if this is so, then the EA is under no obligation to pass on the information.

EAs are also legally abliged to act unbiased towards offers.

This regulation is however only applicable to EAs (IE those which are regulated and are actually registered EAs and under the Estate Agents Act 1979, rather than a tom !!!!!! or harry that sells houses under and another guise such as property services). As the penalty of non compliance with the law is that you may be banned from working as an estate agent, non compliance is of little consequence to an unregistered house selling business.

Although of course every business does have to answer to Trading Standards, which may have different requirements Im not 100% sure what they will request regarding writing.

EAs like everyone hate uncertainty, why would they like it?. But one thing that they do not like doing is putting forward offers which are very low in comparison to the price the vendor is looking for, the reason is simple a hell of a lot of vendors find low offers very offensive. Imagine being the vendor, sitting in what they view to be the perfect house worth x amount, then someone comes along and offers y, which is far below their expectations. They do not end up very happy, and beleive this or not the first person they actually blaime for the low offer is the EA. Why because they are the person giving the bad news.

If the EA is slightly unscrupulous, which may or may not be the case here, then if the other offer is from someone who is selling through the EA then it may be that the EA is trying to seal the deal for the original offer. Although, to be honest I doubt this is the case, as more likely than not an EA who is trying to get the vendor down that route, would have already persuided the vendor to give the original offer a chance to sell by taking the property off of the market for x amount of time to see if it sells.

My advice for any savy buyer is to get to know the EA and sound them out about what sort of range of offer the vendor may accept, the EA wants to get the commission, the vendor wants to sell and the buyer wants to buy so all concerned are looking for the same goal, the only thing to match are the expectations of the vendor and the price that the buyer wishes to acheive and the person who holds all information is the EA.

safesound

When I was looking at buying my first house (last summer) I had almost exactly the same situation as you describe above. I was a chain free, proceedable *cash* buyer. I found a property that I would have been happy with so I made an offer (95K on 110K house) which was promptly turned down, so I made a second offer of 99K, I was then told that they had a higher unproceedable offer on the property but they wouldnt tell me how much this offer was for. Now at the time this was the only house I had found in 6 months of searching that I was even remotely happy with so in the heat of the moment I offered 105K. They nearly snatched my hand off, and proceeded to call me every day for a week wanting to know my information (which conv sol I was using, who my bank was, etc). As it happened I hadnt even decided who I was going to use for the conveyancing or sorted out the financial side so I kept putting them off and the more I did, the more pressure they applied; telephone calls, emails, letters (five in less than a week).
Needless to say within that week I changed my mind, I decided that just being happy with a house wasnt enough, I wanted a house I was 'in love' with. So I called and told them I was withdrawing the offer, I didnt tell them that their pressure tactics had been the clincher though (maybe I should have?).
Anyway to get to the point of this post; I checked back on the house every week for over three months and guess what? It was still on the market three months later. As far as I am concerned there was no unproceedable offer, it was a lie to get me to up my offer. Obviously I'm not saying thats the case everytime, but beware of it, because I could have been pressured into buying a house I didnt really want all because the EA wanted their commision.