Vendors won't speak to us until we've sold

rio

Our house has recently gone up for sale. We have seen a house we like and wanted to put an offer in as a feeler about how much the vendors are looking for. They have rejected our offer which was 92% of the asking price (so not a silly amount considering the house has been for sale for 5 months) and have said that they are prepared to talk to us, but not until we have sold our property. I went back to our EA to ask if we could get some idea of what they are prepared to accept and apparently they won't let us know. Therefore we can't really judge what offers are workable on our property, and we must therefore presume that the vendors are going to hold out for the highest possible price. We are able to drop a little on ours to make the deal still workable if we bought near the vendors asking price but it means we will not be able to accept a low offer for a quick sale which we were quite prepared to do. It could be because of this a perfectly reasonable deal will bite the dust. I told the EA that we are prepared to pay what we think the house is worth but no more.

We did not ask the vendors to take their house off the market or anything like that, neither did we want to be funny or beat their price down. I feel like walking away from them at this point, as if they won't play ball with us on this one then they probably won't play ball all the way along the line. We would be willing to offer up to 95% of the asking price but no more.

Of course the flipside of this is that we could hold out for more than we intended on ours and then come back to them a few weeks down the line with the same offer - but I am still tempted to not bother and look for somewhere else!

By the way I do know from other sources that when they bought the property they only paid 80% of the asking price!

rio

All we want is an indication of what they are looking for. If they said they want/need the asking price then we know where we stand. We don't think the house is worth that much and we would walk away. If we knew they were prepared to drop 5k then we know that we could afford to drop 11k and still be happy with the figures. We're not asking that they accept an offer at this time, just that they tell us what they want. According to the EA ours is the only offer on the property in 5 months and it was an opening offer, we are prepared to go higher, but to be stonewalled like this leaves us in a bit of a predicament. We have had a bit of interest in ours, but obviously if we knew what leyway we had we would be able to advise our prospective buyers accordingly. We are now in a position where we can only accept an offer on ours after we have talked to our potential vendors and found out if they will accept such and such an offer on theirs. This isn't going to help anybody.

plane_boy2000

I dont think that they are being that unreasonable - no point discussing price with you until you are in a position to proceed. When we sold last year our agent made it clear to prospective buyers that we were only interested in offers from people who were proceedable.

Your offer to them would depend on loads of things like the position / strength of your chain etc so you cant really agree anything yet anyway.

Our friends had this earlier this year - a couple made an offer which was turned down as they were not proceedable. They then offered the asking price and couldnt understand why my friend did not accept it and then wait for their buyers house to sell!

lilyann1

I agree, we were told by various EA's not to even contemplate putting an offer in until we had sold ours,as the people will not want to discuss offers or anything til we are proceedable.
We did however go round twice to view the property and talk to the vendors ourselves to say that we were very very interested and we registered our interest with their EA in case any offers were forthcoming before we had sold.
We eventually did end up offering a month later as they were still on the market and are proceeding now.
However we have encountered many problems on the way and it is an ongoing saga with our buyers buyer dropping out in the first place and then our vendor pulling out of his.We are stuck in the middle waiting for it all to go through again!!!
Will be glad when this process is over and I never want to move again.
I keep being told what will be will be.

Doozergirl

From a vendor put in a similar situation, the reason that I would not be prepared to negotiate with you at this point is simply because I would not want the agent to know what I was prepared to accept.

If someone in a proceedable position came up with an offer before you sold yours, I would worry that the agent would not work as hard to get the best price for me.

rio

That's a really good point, I hadn't thought of it like that. We will have to hold out for a higher offer on ours now, so it will be interesting to see how that goes. We are not desperate to sell, so if we get no offers around our asking price then we may very well stay put. We had already said that we would sell for less in order to secure this particular house than we would to buy a bulk standard Wimpy or Bovis. We don't want to mess any potential buyers about, if we agree to sell for x amount then we will sell, but perhaps we are too honest and straightforward for this house buying lark!