Gazumping advice

paulsad

Bunch of bar stewards!
I personally would stand by the offer I'd accepted irrespective of what occurs; accepting/making an offer should be binding with penalties imposed - especially if its costing you survey fees etc.
If you do lose out I hope the greedy sods get their comeuppance!

blinko

But realistically, how does the OP manage this situation. He is faced with a lose the property OR increase his price OR somehow find out how strong the other offer is....

blinko

Apparently you are supposed to submit offers and put a clause in there conditional on the vendor taking the property off the market, but how enforceable the clause is...

Argghhh

they have you by the balls really. no answer can help at this point, the buyer might exist or he might not. How much do you want the house. If you lose out through survey etc send someone round to have a chat with him

bris

Gazumping happens, it's nothing new. The OP has already stated how popular the house is so telling him to stand by his offer is only going to lose him the house.


Bottom line is the house is worth what you are willing to pay. If you match the offer, yes it could start a bidding war, nothing you can do about that though, Up the offer or leave the existing one on the table, nothing else you can do really.

blinko

It happened to me recently I had an offer agreed and there were still 2 more sets of viewings, 2 weeks later I had to up my offer by 7.5% now the property is at its maximum relative market value (any higher and the bank will downvalue the property) apparently the only way to get a property off the market is to be a family member, close friend of the estate agent or pay him off OR to have the surveyors in

Davesnave

Looked at a different way, gazumping is only a house finding its true market value in a free market, but the question is often whether that 'other buyer' really exists , and as a proceedable entity.

When we began our purchase, the agent certainly invested another interested party with more ability to proceed than they actually had. I know this because I later met the person. The existence of that person gave the agent an excuse to ring and advise us to raise our game 'to give yourselves a better chance.' Those were the exact words. We declined.

Later, there was a genuine gazump attempt, but things had moved along and the vendor was not minded to risk losing us. This wasn't the impression their agent and solicitor gave, however, and the overall feeling of hostility created was unnerving, until we met with the vendor.

For us, with a house we'd didn't love at a price we couldn't afford to increase, the choices were easy. The property was marketed at an attractive price, so in other circumstances we might have gone higher, knowing that in a year or two it would all be water under the bridge.

I would therefore say that if the house is attracting a good level of interest and you love it enough, there's no great harm in the offer you are contemplating, but make it firmly final, get a good survey and still be prepared to negotiate hard if something major shows up.

chile_paul

blinko wrote: »

It happened to me recently I had an offer agreed and there were still 2 more sets of viewings, 2 weeks later I had to up my offer by 7.5% now the property is at its maximum relative market value (any higher and the bank will downvalue the property) apparently the only way to get a property off the market is to be a family member, close friend of the estate agent or pay him off OR to have the surveyors in

To be fair, when he had our original offer accepted they took the property off the market within 24 hours including a sold sign up and they also cancelled all of the viewings that had been booked - unfortunately it was one of the people who had viewed the property before us who gazumped us

chile_paul

Davesnave wrote: »

Looked at a different way, gazumping is only a house finding its true market value in a free market, but the question is often whether that 'other buyer' really exists , and as a proceedable entity.

Thanks, this is how I'm choosing to look at it. If all of the interested parties had been at the same position i.e. proceedable at the point they made the offer this would have gone to a bidding war, sealed bids etc.


We had just hoped to beat that by proceeding prior to selling our house - and to be fair I bet the other interested party were absolutely gutted to find out that they were going to lose out on their dream house because somebody was able to proceed before them.

pinkshoes

chile_paul wrote: »

To be fair, when he had our original offer accepted they took the property off the market within 24 hours including a sold sign up and they also cancelled all of the viewings that had been booked - unfortunately it was one of the people who had viewed the property before us who gazumped us

Surely if you have no property to sell, then you are still in a better position than the other buyer? Can you not reiterate this?

If you have already spent money, then increase your offer, but drop it the day before exchange?

Morally, the seller and their EA,are being tw*ts.

We had the same situation, and upped our offer on a property once we were in a position to proceed. Even though our offer was higher than the one accepted from someone else, then EA declined it and said that once an offer is accepted, the vendor did not want to consider other offers. Fair enough.