Offering a deposit to secure a house - would you do this?

Smudger78

Hi,


Viewed a house today which we really like and would like to make an offer on. The problem is we have only just put our house back on the market after having had a buyer but pulling out and taking it off the market last October as we just couldn't find anywhere ourselves after 2 months looking. At that point we were expecting a child so didn't want to be moving house around the time the new addition was due so decided to try again after the birth, which happened a few weeks ago. So low and behold we've found somewhere we like, our property has gone live on the market again today and already we've had a viewing request for this Saturday which all sounds good.


My concern though is that the market in our area is clearly picking up, this property is in an area where they have been selling quickly recently and we might miss out because we don't have a buyer if they wont accept our offer because of this. Given this I am considering making an offer anyway but saying we would be willing to offer a non returning "deposit" of £1000 if they accept and take the property off the market for 3 months during which time we need to find a buyer or they can re-market it and keep the deposit. This would be in addition to the agreed price for the house and I would pay their agent and get something in writing around the terms of the agreement.


We've already missed out on one house last year and the type of property/area we are looking for don't come up often so don't want to miss out on this one too....


Am I mad to consider this? Has anyone else done something similar?

[Deleted User]

The seller stands to gain nothing from such an arrangement, in fact they stand to lose, so it's really not worth it for them. You could try but I would never accept such an offer. A sensible seller would refuse the deposit and keep the house up for the sale, if it doesn't sell for a few months and you're finally ready to buy, why wouldn't you buy it then?

Smudger78

citricsquid wrote: »

The seller stands to gain nothing from such an arrangement, in fact they stand to lose, so it's really not worth it for them. You could try but I would never accept such an offer. A sensible seller would refuse the deposit and keep the house up for the sale, if it doesn't sell for a few months and you're finally ready to buy, why wouldn't you buy it then?

You're right they might not accept it but I thought it was worth a try. The way I see it is that if they agree a price with us which is acceptable to them anyway what they gain is an additional £1k on top if the sale goes through or if it doesn't they get £1k for taking it off the market for 3 months. I know its not a lot but to put it in context they've tried to sell before and ended up taking it off the market as they had lots of viewings but no offers. They've now put it back on and upped the price but with their previous experience may be thinking a bird in hand is worth two in the bush?

lessonlearned

Realistically until you have a buyer then you are not in a position to proceed unless you have sufficient monies to fund a second purchase whilst you sell the first property.

I'm assuming that this is not possible therefore in this case the question of a holding deposit is irrelevant.

TBH I would love to see "non refundable holding deposits" become standard procedure in the house buying process but I can't see it happening.

wwtrend

Buying and selling a house is just a contract between the two parties involved and as long as you are both happy with the terms of the sale then you can proceed as you like. You may find that the seller hasn't yet found a property to move to because they were waiting to sell theirs, a buyer in the bag with a time scale isn't a bad proposition. The agent may not like the deal because they may have to take the house of the market for a while and wait for their commission and they get to pitch the deal to the seller. The agent may not even know the seller's motivation for selling and your proposal could be in their interests. I wouldn't offer the £1K up front I would just pitch the offer based on them waiting 2/3 months (not long in house sale timings). I would come back to them with that proposal if they turn down the first one but that's just me. I see nothing wrong in asking for what you want and trying to negotiate a way to get it with the seller which would be mutually beneficial.

phill99

You're not in a position to make any offers unless you are willing to get into the realms of bridging finance.

You need to be in a position of being 'ready, willing and able' to proceed with the house purchase. You fail on 2 counts. Unfortunately your offer will not be taken seriously, and at most will be registered as 'an expression of interest' .

If I was the vendor, there is no way I would accept £1k to take it off the market. They could easily have 2 parties interested who get into a bidding war and therefore they stand to loose a lot more than £1k.

Smudger78

phill99 wrote: »

You're not in a position to make any offers unless you are willing to get into the realms of bridging finance.

You need to be in a position of being 'ready, willing and able' to proceed with the house purchase. You fail on 2 counts. Unfortunately your offer will not be taken seriously, and at most will be registered as 'an expression of interest' .

If I was the vendor, there is no way I would accept £1k to take it off the market. They could easily have 2 parties interested who get into a bidding war and therefore they stand to loose a lot more than £1k.

By way of an update we've had feedback from the agent today after our initial offer which was 10% below asking price was rejected. The feedback was that they would be willing to accept the deposit proposal but their "bottom line" (which I asked for) is only 2% less than asking price as they've only just gone back on the market, they have more viewings arranged and have had another offer higher than ours which they've also rejected. But in essence if we met their price they take a deposit and remove it from the market. All of this of course comes from their agent so the extent to which it is 100% true with regards offers and viewings could be open to question.


I understand their position but what they want is more than we think the property is worth so we've decided to play it cool. We've told the agent we will leave it for now and review things after we've had our viewings at the weekend and looked at some other properties ourselves.


Its so difficult to know what to do for the best in this situation, it does seem the market is picking up and we don't want to miss out on the house as we really like it but at the same time don't want to be drawn into an auction and pay over the odds.


House moving, who'd do it? Not me again after this one that's for sure!