House under offer

marylee

I have seen a house I am interested at £255,000, but it is under offer. Please can somebody advise me what to do whether I should ring the EA and ask how much the other buyer is offering. I do not think, I would be interested to pay that price due to the 3% stamp duty and it is only £5000 involved. Thanks

Jay1b

If its under offer, then technically the EA should tell you 'its sold' when you phone and enquire about it. By all means try.

At that price, its been priced so people knock it down to £250K.

Joannaclaire

If it's under offer, then it's as good as sold. By all means tell the EA you'd be interested if the current sale falls through, but what you are considering doing - ie trying to make an offer to buy the property is gazumping and remember what goes around, comes around....

AndrewSmith

Also it is very rare for an agent to tell you what another offer is.

Andy

Tassotti

This type of situation infuriates me, and should be stamped out of the UK property market.

If the property is under offer (and that offer has been accepted), why are they continuing to market it. Pure greed on the Sellers and estate agents side.

Scenario :- You beat the exisiting offer, it is accepted. You then pay for valuation, legals,etc, and are ready to exchange. At last minute, your solicitor informs you there has been a higher offer. Now, you either have to enter a bidding war (and probably overpay for the property) or you pull out and lose all your money/time invested in the process. You've then been Gazzumped.

Believe me, its not very nice when this happens.

However, if the offer hasn't been accepted, this is a different matter. Some estate agents will employ this sales tactic. This "offer" shows you that other people are interested in the property, so you have to be quick to purchase it.
Unfortunately, a lot of people think with their hearts not their heads when it comes to property, and will fall for these types of tactics.

As Jay1b said, the vendors want 250K for it. Houses are selling for an average of 93% of asking prices, which would make 230K a reasonably offer. Check sold prices comparables for the house/street (if there are any) and then decide what you consider to be a fair offer (then stick to it)

Good luck

NixNoo

Marylee

We were interested in a house recently, phoned EA and they said it was under offer and couldn't show us round but they did take my number incase things should fall thro' - think that's all you could do really.

Meeten

Agreeing with others - the EA is not obliged to tell you the offer. And, i doubt v much that they will.

Assuming that they are going under the higher Gordon Brown money making band, then it is a good assumption that the price is below £250k.

By all means tell the EA that you are interested - whose to say that the person taht has already made the offer will DEFINATELY complete? This way, you have put your hat in the ring and let the EA know that you are interested .....

mummytofour

We offerd on a house and the offer was excepted, however the house was still being marketed, why? because we could not move forward as we had not sold our own, once our house was under offer then the house we had offerd on was taken off the market and we are buying it for the price we agreed. So some times teh house does still need to be marketed.

marylee

Thanks to all of you for your advice.