Cash buyers and gazunder'ing

Dird

Mortgage appointment to approval took 2 weeks for me. This included the survey.

You're still going to need a survey & searches so at most you're only cutting 2 weeks off the process vs FTB w/ mortgage. How many people are likely to be so desperate to sell that they'd sacrifice £10-20k rather than wait a couple weeks? What's the likelihood you'd find such a desperate person?

moneyistooshorttomention

Most people work on the basis that things will go "according to plan". Most people only have enough money set to one side to cover one set of housebuying fees - and, if you feel free to swan in and grab their house it has been agreed they will buy from under their nose, then would find it difficult to stump up some of those housebuying fees for a second time.

Faced with someone else grabbing "their" house under their nose - then most people would find that they had to re-offer on a lower-price (ie less desirable) house or maybe were no longer able to buy at all. We've seen people posting on here before now that have had "their" house-to-be snatched from under their nose and, consequently, been unable to buy anywhere (courtesy of not being able to pay out fees for a second time).

ManuelG

Hmm, sometimes it's handy to use a spot of empathy to see if a tactic would work.

Now personally if I were selling my house, had agreed a deal and then someone offered me a *lower* offer, my first instinct would be to think they were a nutter and to dismiss them out of hand.

If my sale fell through and they came back, I'd still think they were a nutter... and dismiss them out of hand. They'd have lost all chance of buying my property.

Even if I were in a charitable mood and moved beyond the nutter stage, I'd be concerned if they were prepared to offer less then, just how low would they want to go after surveys etc... and so would dismiss them out of hand.

You'd be tarnishing your reputation as a reliable buyer before getting the chance to buy.

Davesnave

Many of the responses on here are based on the one thing you don't appear to have: experience.

During our last purchase someone tried to gazump us, but the vendor was genuinely 'needy,' as you put it, so had no intention of fouling-up a sale that was progressing properly.

Earlier, like you, we imagined that being unencumbered cash buyers might make us especially capable of striking a good deal. With patience and flexibility on our part, that eventually proved the case, but we found many of those 'motivated' to sell, had property which was less desirable or with a down-side impossible to fix. Something is only a bargain if it's not the proverbial sow's ear!

It is therefore hard putting the theories you hold into practice, especially in a reasonably good market