Making an offer before we have an offer - can it be/has it been done?

Daniel_B

Hello all, here's our potential quandry.

Our house has been on the market for 4 weeks, only 3 viewings, we have just dropped the price by 4K to try and stir up more interest.

A house we are interested in is up for X thousand, and if we sold our house for a bit less than the current asking price we could just afford the full asking price.

My thinking is to make an offer on the house, and if it is, for example, accepted at 10K less than it's asking price, I could immediately drop this off the asking price of our house to try and enable a faster sale, and so enable us to proceed that much faster.

Has anyone done this, or had this approach accepted by the seller?

The house we are interested in is vacant by the way.

I'm fully aware that even if an offer is accepted but someone else comes along in the meantime who can proceed, then we lose out.

Thanks

Dan

PoorDave

Are you saying the vendor of the house you're buying should accept an offer of x thousand below their asking price because you will then knock the same off your asking price to proceed quickly?

As the vendor, i'd be suspicious! Unless it's in writing you could be trying to pull some clever stunt - they don't know you, so why should they believe you? Also, what's to say you don't already have your house listed for the same x thousands too much simply to subtract it later?!

Good luck to you though

:beer:

Bluelad_2

There is nothing to stop you making an offer, but as you are not proceedable the vendor is unlikely to accept a low offer whilst you are not in a strong position. They are also highly unlikely to take the property off the market until you are proceedable. Personally I'd wait until I was in the strong position before offering.

Doozergirl

You're just window shopping right now as you have no money to spend. Making offers is liable to set you up for stress and disappointment. Virtually any agent will tell the vendor to keep marketing and while they do that, they can get a better offer from a proceedable buyer.

A big reason that I would not even provisionally accept your offer whilst I continued to market, is that I would not be prepared for an estate agent to know how low an offer I might be prepared to accept from any buyer, not just you. They will take advantage of that fact and suggest that people make lower offers in order to close the deal; it also leaves you prone to being gazumped (in the very loosest sense of the word).

Wait until you have an offer.

Daniel_B

Thankyou all,

I'm not for one minute suggesting that people should not be suspicious, or will definitely accept an offer, just asking it it was possible.

The property we are interested in is vacant, and has had no offers, and has been on the market for sometime, most people I speak to think it is overpriced, and the price was recently dropped by 10K.

True enough, they could indeed think I was trying to pull a fast one, but if you don't ask you don't get eh, and the fact is I am not trying to pull a fast one, at the end of the day my mortgage will still be 200K, I would just sell my house for less money.

We've also noticed that in the past week a lot of properties have been taken off the market, or been sold, so the choice of properties that we would potentially be interested in has plummeted hugely.

If the seller was prepared to accept an offer such as above, I've already said I am prepared to be gazumped/beaten to it by someone in a proceedable position, but if we lost it by just not trying at all, that seems a defeatist attitude in my eyes.

Dan

cuffie

We saw a house we liked, viewed twice, hadn't got ours on market. Offered a price and vendor said subject to us selling ours would talk some more. We accepted a slightly lower offer because the vendor accepted lower.
We were literally within £1k - basically had one EA in one phone on the left ear and one EA on the other phone on the right ear. Backwards and forwards, raising our price on the left, offering lower on the right - met bang on target! A fretful hour or so....that seems a long time ago now....has been a fretful few months and as it is nearing the end, my nails are bitten down and hair falling out!!!! You need to get an offer first, any offer....then you can start the ball game!
Good luck! x

Daniel_B

Cheers Cuffie, that's exactly the kind of reply I was after, from someone who had been there and got the T-Shirt :T

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers

Dan

Tomthumb

I guess you won't know until you try - put a low offer in subject to selling yours and see what happens, it could be that the vendor will not accept below a certain price regardless of the situation of the purchaser. At least you'll know where you stand. Good luck!!

cuffie

Daniel_B wrote:

Cheers Cuffie, that's exactly the kind of reply I was after, from someone who had been there and got the T-Shirt :T

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers

Dan

Not got the t-shirt out of the packet yet though......so close to exchange its scary!!
Good luck. x

rio

It might also be that the vendor will use your offer, even though it is not yet proceedable, to try and get higher offers from other interested parties. They can always say we have an offer of X on the table already, without giving away much more information. We are interested in a house we saw 6 weeks ago, but have yet to sell our own. The vendors EA is ringing up every week to check our position, so we know that their mustn't be too much other interest in our prospective house. Register your interest with the EA, if the house is within your budget then fine, just stand your ground. If it isn't do the sums and make a few gentle enquiries about the property, wait and see what happens, if it doesn't work out it wasn't meant to be. We had three house sales fall through before we moved to our present house, and it is so much better than any of the ones we so called 'fell in love with'. Now it's time for us to move on, we're in the market again, but older and wiser this time round - I hope!

Also be careful that your house isn't marketed too cheaply, if it is seen advertised a lot cheaper than other properties then people may well assume there is something wrong with it. If the house you want falls through you will also limit your buying power on other properties.

Bluelad_2

I have also 'Been there and got the T-shirt'. Unfortunately the Tshirt was the wrong size and we lost out. Hence the cautious responses to your original question.

You asked if any of us have been there and many of us have. If you only wanted answers that gave the great news that you wanted to hear then why didn't you say.