buying advice when people go into care

benson1980

Hi, we've been looking for a house for a good few months, and the areas that we are looking at tend to typically yield properties being sold on behalf of the owners by family members- either deceased parties or people who have gone into care and the family are dealing with the estate on their behalf.

The latest house we've put an offer in for falls into the latter. Its up for 279k, which we know is a tricky price bracket as most people are going to offer below the stamp duty. The EA has confirmed this is the case with two offers around the stamp duty threshold. We've offered 260k- the property needs a fair bit of work and this has been rejected.

The EA suggests they need a quick sale but now I'm not so sure- have the sellers actually got anything to gain by pushing through a sale? It would appear that when someone goes into care if their savings are below a certain amount the state then funds it for the first 12 weeks, and after this the costs just get offset against the eventual sale price of the house. Therefore what exactly would the motivation be for the family to sell sooner rather than later? What they want is not a fair price for what it is in our opinion, this being 270k. The EA has even bizarrely said that they wouldn't value the house above 250k and that our offer was more than reasonable.

Is there any angle we can use to negotiate because at present it doesn't actually appear that the family have any motivation to sell it? Its been on the market for about 7 weeks.