Offer Accepted! But.....

rikard

Hi Guys,

After a journey that took 16 different house viewings, we finally had our offer accepted - well, provisionally.!!

The vendor has made two conditions before she will accept:

1) No more reduction on price
2) We give the vendors a long completion period as they haven't found a property to purchase.


Ok, on point 1 - its taken us 3 weeks to agree on the price - I had to fight tooth and nail to negotiate £5k off asking price - the vendor is hard work!. I told the EA that this point was fine by us in principle but I would be getting a building survey done and if anything major comes up, we would need to discuss this.

Point 2. My wife an I are chain free and used this as one of our selling points when making the offer. We also offered lots of flexibility in terms of completion time. However, to put some sort of limit of this flexibility, I told the EA that I would give them however long our mortgage offer was valid for.

EA has passed this on to vendors so just waiting for them to agree and officially accept our offer.

On Point 1 - I guess if anything major comes up on survey, i could either re-negotiate or walk away. I can live with this.

On Point 2 - If they haven't found anywhere to buy, should we start the mortgage application process, instruct surveyors etc now or only after they have had an offer accepted on a property? I presume its in our interest to Exchange as quickly as possible?

Sorry for the questions. Im not a FTB but my only purchase was a new build so I've never purchased off a private vendor before!

Thanks

Rick

G_M

rikard wrote: »

...
The vendor has made two conditions before she will accept:

1) no more reduction on price
2) we give the vendors a long completion period as they haven't found a property to purchase.


Ok, on point 1 - its taken us 3 weeks to agree on the price - i had to fight tooth and nail to negotiate £5k off asking price - the vendor is hard work!. I told the ea that this point was fine by us in principle but i would be getting a building survey done and if anything major comes up, we would need to discuss this.
why? Making this point will just cause the vendor to reconsider/hesitate/argue further.
If the survey is fine, there's no need to have made this point.
If the survey is not fine, that is the time to either pull out or adjust your offer.

point 2. My wife an i are chain free and used this as one of our selling points when making the offer.
but clearly it makes no difference to the vendor, so a pretty weak selling point!
we also offered lots of flexibility in terms of completion time. However, to put some sort of limit of this flexibility, i told the ea that i would give them however long our mortgage offer was valid for.
seems fair - how long is that? Have you given them the date?
And if you get to that date (or the week before) what will you actually do?

ea has passed this on to vendors so just waiting for them to agree and officially accept our offer.
you are making it more difficult for yourself by imposing your own conditions unecessarily

on point 1 - i guess if anything major comes up on survey, i could either re-negotiate or walk away. I can live with this.
exactly. So why even discus it now?

on point 2 - if they haven't found anywhere to buy, should we start the mortgage application process, instruct surveyors etc now or only after they have had an offer accepted on a property? I presume its in our interest to exchange as quickly as possible?
will they exchange before they find somewhere? I doubt it. So save your money and start the process once they have somewhere to go.

......................................................................:t

Brown_Eyed_Girl

When you exchange you set the date for when you complete. So you'd be tied to that date, regardless of whether the seller was ready.

I can't see them going for that as they'll need to flexible and work with their own sellers timeframes

libf

Brown_Eyed_Girl wrote: »

When you exchange you set the date for when you complete. So you'd be tied to that date, regardless of whether the seller was ready.

I can't see them going for that as they'll need to flexible and work with their own sellers timeframes

Not if you exchanged with completion on notice but with a long stop date of the mortgage offers expiry.

anselld

None of these conditions and counter-conditions are in any way enforceable so largely pointless.

However to your second question, do not instruct any further work involving expenditure until your sellers have found somewhere, indeed until the whole chain is complete.

martinthebandit

anselld wrote: »

None of these conditions and counter-conditions are in any way enforceable so largely pointless.

However to your second question, do not instruct any further work involving expenditure until your sellers have found somewhere, indeed until the whole chain is complete.

This and I would continue to view other properties.

Missus_Hyde

However to your second question, do not instruct any further work involving expenditure until your sellers have found somewhere, indeed until the whole chain is complete.

martinthebandit wrote: »

This and I would continue to view other properties.

This and I would be rather concerned as to whether they actually wanted to sell the property at all, but were perhaps putting it on the market on a sort of whim and could quite easily change their mind if they couldn't find anything they wanted to buy.

(I say this as one of our neighbours did similar; they didn't really want to move, but wanted to see how much their house would fetch and then they might move if they could find something suitable.)

pinkshoes

Not particularly willing to negotiate on price, haven't found somewhere to buy and wanting a long time until exchange...

Sounds to me these are not serious sellers, so you could be wasting your time here.

I would not pay for a survey or organise a mortgage until they have found a property to purchase, otherwise you will probably be wasting your money.

rikard

Thanks for the replies!

In terms of whether the sellers are serious about moving - time will tell. I will hold off from making any financial commitments until the seller has had an offer accepted.

On the mortgage front - We've found a decent 5 year fixed deal with First Direct. What would be the best course of action to secure that deal in our situation?

Thanks

Rich

Atomix

So they take their time finding their next property, in the mean time it's still on the market? And someone offers full-asking price, and as you had a battle to get just £5k off, they may very we'll accept full asking price, meanwhile you're back at square one.... x16 viewings per interested property.... And so the circle carries on...

BelleNI

Hi Rick,


I'd be really careful of committing to sellers who haven't found anywhere yet. One good check is to ask if they can name a property they've been to look at and liked. If they can't chances are they have done little more than browse on RightMove.


Back in February we waited three months for a family to find somewhere but every time we called the estate agent to see if they'd found anything we got excuses such as they were away on a holiday they'd booked ages ago, they couldn't do viewings when the children were off school. Basically anything to keep us on the hook and buy time for people who were only looking at property online and not going out and doing anything. We walked away but wasted three months and prices went up so we lost out.


Don't go to any expense yourself until they have found something and had an offer accepted.
In the meantime, phone the estate agent for weekly updates and keep looking to see what else comes on the market.


Good luck and remember you are in a strong position being chain free and serious sellers will appreciate the value of that.