Agents telling buyers we have accepted offer when we have not.

DamePeggy

jjlandlord wrote: »

What do you want to achieve?

You put your property on the market and have 2 offers for the asking price. What more to wish for?

You are joking right?

DRP

DamePeggy wrote: »

Thanks to everyone for your comments.

There are indeed two aspects to this – whether the marketing was good and then the communication.

Gaining two offers at the agrreed asking price may well have been decent, and adding more buyers into the mix may well have produced more harm than good – but we are NOT talking about offers with confirmed ability to proceed – indeed it is now looking as if one of them is not in a position to do so. Turning potential buyers away on the basis of unsubstantiated offers cannot be acceptable (especially when they categorically assured me that they were still ‘actively marketing’ the place).

I would be giving them their notice regardless. At the very least it'll get them working harder to seel the place before the contract is over...

jjlandlord

DamePeggy wrote: »

You are joking right?

I'm very serious.

I think that you saw these 2 offers at asking price and are now becoming greedy and trying to increase your asking price.
Only reasonable reason is if asking price was obviously too low, which we (and it seems you) don't know.

If you have several serious offers at asking price, ask them to submit a final best offer, then be done with it.

You can wait a very long time if you always expect that one higher offer right behind the corner.

Once you have accepted an offer you can focus on finding your new place with 2 advantages:
1. You know exactly how much you can afford,
2. You can tell vendors that you are ready to proceed, which is a much better position than telling a vendor that they'll have to wait for you to find a buyer.

alwaystryyourbest

jjlandlord wrote: »

What do you want to achieve?

You put your property on the market and have 2 offers for the asking price. What more to wish for?

This is what I was thinking.

bryanb

jjlandlord wrote: »

I'm very serious.

I think that you saw these 2 offers at asking price and are now becoming greedy and trying to increase your asking price.
Only reasonable reason is if asking price was obviously too low, which we (and it seems you) don't know.

If you have several serious offers at asking price, ask them to submit a final best offer, then be done with it.

You can wait a very long time if you always expect that one higher offer right behind the corner.

Once you have accepted an offer you can focus on finding your new place with 2 advantages:
1. You know exactly how much you can afford,
2. You can tell vendors that you are ready to proceed, which is a much better position than telling a vendor that they'll have to wait for you to find a buyer.

Nonetheless the EA should be doing as the client has instructed. That was the original question.

nobblyned

alwaystryyourbest wrote: »

This is what I was thinking.

How about knowing whether the offers are proceedable or not prior to taking it off the market?

DamePeggy

jjlandlord wrote: »

I'm very serious.

I think that you saw these 2 offers at asking price and are now becoming greedy and trying to increase your asking price.
Only reasonable reason is if asking price was obviously too low, which we (and it seems you) don't know.

There are a few problems with your comments as far is it relates to my situation - we simply don’t yet know that these offers are indeed serious.

More generally ,the selling of a house is not, and never has been, a case of settign a price and then see who gets in first to match it. Asking prices are set, but then there’s always negotiations - it’s how agents justify their fees in the first place.

There are loads of reasons why offers might differ – only one of which is price. There are always trade-offs betweween the price offered, timescales and the flexibilty of dates etc.

We certainly don’t expect to wait around for better offers (you’ll have to take my word on it that we’re not that kind of people), but what we do expect is not to have the situation decided for us just because someone may (or may not) have offered the estimated price. I don’t think that makes us greedy.

hazyjo

DamePeggy wrote: »

We certainly don’t expect to wait around for better offers (you’ll have to take my word on it that we’re not that kind of people), but what we do expect is not to have the situation decided for us just because someone may (or may not) have offered the estimated price. I don’t think that makes us greedy.

Trouble is, it (I assume) didn't go on the market as 'offers in excess of' or 'offers in the region of' or a bracket such as '£300-350k'. It is therefore considered an asking price - and, yes, people may choose to pay in excess of that figure, but that doesn't make it an 'estimated price' in buyers' eyes.

Try turning it around. If you saw a house you loved, offered on, was told someone else was interested so you upped your offer, and was then put on hold indefinitely as other people were still trying to view - how would you feel? Some with withdraw their offer, others would hang on but (like me) would certainly still be viewing with a view to offering elsewhere too.

Saying all that, yes, they should have still shown people round while discussing the price with the two interested parties!

Jx

yoshiyella

We told our EA that we would accept the first offer of full asking price provided they could provide all relevent required information within 3 working days and only then would the house be taken off the market. Very poor of the EA IMHO but all I can assume is a lack of communication somewhere

DamePeggy

hazyjo wrote: »

Trouble is, it (I assume) didn't go on the market as 'offers in excess of' or 'offers in the region of' or a bracket such as '£300-350k'. It is therefore considered an asking price - and, yes, people may choose to pay in excess of that figure, but that doesn't make it an 'estimated price' in buyers' eyes.

Try turning it around...

I do agree - of course I've been a buyer and a seller and I know how I would like to be treated and I'm definitely going to be playing as fair as I can.

But again I've always understood that a price, asking or otherwise, is not by any means set in stone - or at least not until an offer have been accepted.

I probably shouldn't have put the remark about the house possibly being undervallued in the OP as that suggested that it was on price alone that we were concerned.