Can a buyer drop their offer!! Advice needed!!

sarahloumitch

Hi, Just sold our house at Christmas. It was advertised and valued by our estate agent at £110,000. We agreed to take it off the market for £115,000 which was the offer that was put to us. They have just received the results of a homebuyers survey which has brought up a couple of jobs but they have agreed between themselves to do the work as its nothing serious. But they are now saying that because the valuation came in at what the estate agent valued it for (so the valuation is spot on) that they want some money taking off, £2,000 to be precise. Can they do this and has anyone out there got any advice? Thanks

nomoneytoday

You have 3 choices.

Say ok
Say no
Meet in the middle somewhere

eddddy

Yes - they can revise their offer for any reason (or no reason).

It's up to you whether you accept the revised offer.

If you say 'No' - you have to judge whether they will walk away or not.

lisyloo

Yes - the offer is not binding and subject to what the survey says.
It doesn't sound unreasonable to me.
They are not asking for loads and they are still paying £3K over the valuation.

Don't know how active the market is where you live, but I'd probably negotiate as in my view they aren't being unreasonable, in fact they've gone for less than halfway.

cloo

Yes, they can and at any point up until you're about to exchange contracts, alas. They're giving a slightly odd reason to ask for the money off (unless their mortgage lenders is leaving them 2k short) but I think you need to decided whether it's worth pushing the point or not. In your case I might decide to say 'OK, 1k off' - it gives them a little victory, while not losing you much at all and deal goes on fine (one hopes)

martin1959

Seems reasonable.


I would always recommend buyers get a home buyers report as opposed to a valuation. It only costs an extra £300 or so, and is filled with 20 pages of crap picking the property to bits....LOL. Once you have this, unless the property you are buying is in huge demand, you should always be able to knock the vendor down by more that the £300!!


Another 'trick' is to wait until the day before exchange and offer a few grand less....morally reprehensible, but not illegal. I have know this to be done where there is a long upward chain involved, and everyone is asked to 'contribute' to the reduced offer to stop the chain collapsing (I have know some complicated chains, of 5/6 properties, to have taken 18 months to be put together)


This, and gazumping, are examples of why the Scottish system is by far and above better. Once and offer is made in writing and accepted, it is binding on both parties.

phoebe1989seb

martin1959 wrote: »

Another 'trick' is to wait until the day before exchange and offer a few grand less....morally reprehensible, but not illegal. I have know this to be done where there is a long upward chain involved, and everyone is asked to 'contribute' to the reduced offer to stop the chain collapsing (I have know some complicated chains, of 5/6 properties, to have taken 18 months to be put together).

This happened to our buyers when we were selling at the end of last year. Short chain in this case - our vendor (who had already bought and moved out), us, our buyer and their buyer (BTL). Surveys and valuations had been done by our buyers and theirs with both properties valued at originally agreed price. Everything was moving along nicely.

Two weeks before exchange our buyer's buyer dropped her price by £10k (she had offered asking price of £250k to our buyers on the understanding the house would not hit RM - first day on market) and gave no reason for her reduction only that she knew how desperate they were to not lose our house. Turns out she had been deliberately delaying proceedings till she had screwed them over for £10k :mad:

Our buyers - naively imho - agreed and rather than passing this loss down the chain to us, they (very honourably imho) went out and increased their borrowing by £10k......once their buyer had their agreement to this demand she suddenly began pushing for a quick exchange

Sales then all proceeded towards exchange which happened a couple of weeks later.

Giddypip

On the first house I purchased I reduced my offer by £6,000 due to findings on the report I commissioned, this was accepted by the seller.
When I sold my first house to move up the ladder, I pulled out of the house I offered on due to findings on the report that showed nearly £15,000 worth of work was required and the seller would not accept any reduction in offer price.
This is what reports are for and you now have to decide if you want to negotiate. If you refuse and your buyer walks away, would you be happy to have to start marketing your property again to potentially end up with the same problem?

rushandy

Quite common to have the price reduced following a survey I suspect.

Like others have said, they're not asking for a massive reduction. If I were in your position I think I'd do as Cloo suggested. Say the most you'll drop the price by is 1k. If they baulk, let 'em have the 2k. You're still 3k to the good on what your house was valued at.

Good luck whatever you decide to do.