Rightmove - under offer v sold subject to contract

tyllwyd

How strictly do EA's apply the difference when they mark houses as 'under offer' or 'sold subject to contract' on rightmove?

Rightmove says that under offer means that "a homebuyer has made a formal offer to purchase the property but the homeowner has not confirmed whether to accept."

Since under offer properties disappear off the main search results, I always assumed that when a property is under offer it is effectively off the market - but the rightmove definition implies that the house would only be 'under offer' for a few days, and then the houseowner would either decline it or it would become 'sold subject to contract'. Is that how it should work, because houses seem to be under offer for months at a time?

princessamy86

Rightmove takes information off our system via an automatic feed, which updates every 24 hours. Assuming this is the same for all agents, it depends on how they work their systems!

With us a property is under offer once we have had an offer accepted. We call this a B Sale, and the property stays like that until we have had the survey done and the mortgage offer has been issued. At this stage, we move the property into A Sale and it become SSTC. Not all agents will work to that, definitions vary quite widely!

gbuck

With our recent purchase, the property was listed as Under Offer from when are formal offer was accepted until exchange of contracts, when it was changed to SOLD subject to contract.

SimonMrGreenWard

Under offer = Sold stc here. No difference whatsoever.

tyllwyd

Thanks for the responses - so I take it that all agents work to slightly different definitions, but the one thing that is certain is that they never work to the definition given by rightmove on its own website. No wonder I was confused!

silentotter

Is it still possible for someone to make an offer on a property that is still at the under offer stage?

tyllwyd

Well, if 'under offer' actually means that an offer has been accepted by the vendors, I suppose you could theoretically make an offer but it isn't really the done thing.

honey9

seems to differ from EA to EA, we were interested in a property that we were told was under offer but it's not marked as such on Rightmove (or the agent's own site) so it's likely they don't change its status till the offer's accepted and it is SSTC.

sunshinetours

Phone the agents and ask. Many properties seem to be coming back on the market after being SSTC round here so presumably chains are falling through quite regularly still

neas

our house went on as sstc straight away... and i'd want it to be like that as 'under offer' sounds like its available for a counter offer.