Best & Final Offer - does this seem odd ?

Conrad

mi-key wrote:

Cant say I'm too happy about this as all it will do is drive up the price either person ends up paying.

Seems like a great idea if you were the seller!

Most people aim to achieve the highest price they can whether it be selling thier home, car or haggling with thier boss for a wage rise.

NastyMatt

Offer what you are prepared to pay... forget about the other buyer. Yes you "may" offer £3k more than them but you have offered what you are prepared to pay!! And it is not a wasted £3k as you have secured the house you want.

By trying to squeeze in just over what the others (if there are any other buyers) might be bidding you may lose the house. Forget about what the house sold for before... this is irrelevant information now as the vendor may have decided the market has gone up and will only accept £x amount. You say the house "sold" two weeks ago but fell through.. they now have other offers which will make them think their house is desireable.

Set your price.. tell the EA.. if you get it great if not look elsewhere.

mi-key

Thanks, that is good advice.

One thing we are going to do though is make our offer conditional on the seller signing a lock out type of agreement where they wont be able to accept other offers once ours is accepted.

May seem a bit paranoid, but I get the impression either the agent or the seller would have no qualms in accepting a higher offer after ours, or inventing another buyer in an attempt to push our offer up.

No way I am paying for a full survey and legal costs etc.. to have someone try and mess around after an offer is accepted.

House prices in the area arent rising, they have been static for a long time, and with the interest rate rise, they arent going to be going up in the near future.

The way I look at it is, if the seller has no intention of allowing gazumping, then why would they not agree to the contract ? if they wont agree then we'll find somewhere else - and it will be the seller and agents fault they lost the sale.

NastyMatt

"the seller signing a lock out type of agreement ".. it won't work. Why? By law the EA has to tell the vendor about any bids. So if an offer comes in at yours+£10k what stops them from taking that?

Your agreement? No chance.. because there are no penalties. If they had to put a deposit down with the agreement they lose that if the pull out but that does not happen in this country.

We're not in Scotland so no one is legally bound until exchange day. I am saying this from experience I am in the middle of buying somewhere else after the first vendor pulled out but I can do nothing.. I am in the lap of the Gods... my best bet is to get this bought asap!

hethmar

As someone who was in the position 2 weeks back - and lost the house - Id say, if you really want the place and will feel sick if you lose it, chance the higher offer. Have you time to have another look round first?

mi-key

Some good news - the EA finally called us back at 4.00 pm yesterday and said she had spent all day trying to get hold of the other buyers, when she eventually did, they said they werent interested anymore and didnt want to put in another offer ( although why they couldnt have just called the agent first thing and told them this out of courtesy I dont know ! ).

So told the EA to forget this daft final offers thing, and lets do it the normal way - increased our offer to £173,500 - seller rejected this but said if we can do £174K then they would be happy with this.

As this was less than the maximum we had decided to pay, then we are quite happy with this and agreed.

Shortly afterwards the manager of the EA's rung us back, and spent about 10 minutes assuring us that they dont allow gazumping in their office, and they would take the house of the market immediately and not allow any further viewings - she semed pretty genuine, so we'll take her at her word and see what happens.

Did mention to her that we were going to get a full survey done, and that our offer was subject to this coming back OK with no major works needing doing - she said 'you do know their very expensive, dont you?' - ummm yes, we know how much they cost - 'a homebuyers report would be fine, and they're a lot cheaper' - maybe so, but we're spending £174K on a house that needs modernising and completely stripping out, so for the sake of spending a few hundred extra now, I'd rather know exactly what we're taking on !

So.... fingers crossed it looks like its all going ahead.

worriedfirsttimebuyer

Really good news that you secured the house (fingers crossed re survey), the 'other' buyer sounds even more made up now?
Estate agents can be very tricky animals can't they. Actually, saying that, ours was lovely and helpful but our mortgage advisor was horrendous and did not return a single call, it took us 5 weeks to get our mortgage offer out of her.
Anyway, hope it all goes well from now on in, let us know.

Jorgan_2

mi-key wrote:

Some good news - the EA finally called us back at 4.00 pm yesterday and said she had spent all day trying to get hold of the other buyers, when she eventually did, they said they werent interested anymore and didnt want to put in another offer ( although why they couldnt have just called the agent first thing and told them this out of courtesy I dont know ! ).

Welcome to the world of dealing with buyers & sellers. Glad its all worked out for you.

mi-key

Thanks all - I think the other buyers were real, but from what the agent said they were putting in offers on a few other places at the same time, so I dont know what they would have done if more than one has been accepted.

Still, we got it at a price we were happy with, so as long as everything else goes OK then we should be going ahead.