Made an offer... Nervous wait

bmthmark

If I were you I would keep looking at other properties.

When I was looking I always said to myself don't get your heart set on any property. I know its hard but you have to think that there will always be another property that pops up.

Do not get pushed around by anyone especially estate agents. Just be straight with them and make sure they are aware that this is your final offer and that you also have other properties you are looking at.

Its quite common for an estate agent to say that they have had another offer. Most of the time they say this with the hope you up your offer. If they say that to you again I would just reply by saying 'you have plenty of others to look at, so please let me know asap whether the offer has been accepted'.

Anyway good luck with it. We have all been there and its a really painful waiting game.

studentguy

We're gutted. Yesterday they had two offers of the asking price, and the vendor knew one of them so they accepted their offer. Didn't even get a chance to counter offer.

We are gutted.

ElsieMonkey

studentguy wrote: »

We're gutted. Yesterday they had two offers of the asking price, and the vendor knew one of them so they accepted their offer. Didn't even get a chance to counter offer.

We are gutted.

Sorry to hear this. But you said in a previous post that your offer was as high as you could go? So what counter offer did you think you'd be able to make?

Unfortunately these things happen and is part and parcel of the process. When you make an offer you are handing over all control to the vendor whilst you hang there in limbo. This can't be avoided to a certain extent, but your offer could have been used to haggle up the offers made by the other 2 viewers for all you know which is why you find yourself now priced out of the game, which is why I suggested previously you say your offer stands until X day. Swings and roundabouts but you can help yourself next time by not putting all your eggs in one basket and not handing all control over to the vendor to play you to his advantage.

If something has just come on the market and you really like it, and it's priced fairly, best to just go in with asking price next time. And only look at properties you know you can afford (unless it's clearly overpriced).

Don't want to put a downer on it but buying/selling property is horrible most of the time so brace yourself, you've only just started! I've learnt the hard way that if you don't look out for your own interests, no one else will in this process.

studentguy

I don't think either of us truly realised how much we liked it until it's gone. Obviously now we're full of what ifs.

There was a possibility we could have met the asking price with some help from my gfs family. The problem was that we were pressured into putting in an offer early by friends and family so we had to enter what we thought was truly secure, we're new to this so we assumed we'd get a yes or no fairly fast and then we could up our offer if needed, or if there was a rival bid.

I suppose I thought as well, if I went straight in at the asking price they'd probably think they underpriced the property and wait for higher offers.. Maybe I was wrong, I am new to this game.

Either way it sounded as if the chips were stacked against us anyway, they ended up selling to a friend of theirs... Maybe they were giving them first refusal anyway.

We're gutted. There's no where else on the market in our area for our budget like it, so we either have to go for a property that is inferior and we're always going to know it is, or just hold out, but we're limited to how long we can hold out due to my rental situation.

AlexMac

Don't despair. Every time we've bought a house in the past 20 years, we've hit the point where we gave up... because our offers were beaten or other reasons. Then, our ideal home would drop into our lap; once, when contacted by an agent despite saying we'd stopped; another time, driving down a road outside our search area; when we found this current one- then a tired, ex-rental, now an ideal home!

serendipity rules- keep cheerful

AnotherJoe

studentguy wrote: »

I don't think either of us truly realised how much we liked it until it's gone. Obviously now we're full of what ifs.

There was a possibility we could have met the asking price with some help from my gfs family. The problem was that we were pressured into putting in an offer early by friends and family so we had to enter what we thought was truly secure, we're new to this so we assumed we'd get a yes or no fairly fast and then we could up our offer if needed, or if there was a rival bid.

I suppose I thought as well, if I went straight in at the asking price they'd probably think they underpriced the property and wait for higher offers.. Maybe I was wrong, I am new to this game.

You can overthink these things. If you offer FAP they havent got much of an excuse to delay with a response either way (and a rejection would be strange) and you've got the opportunity to ask its taken off the market.

You may still have lost out due to the person they knew but thats unusual and in general for such trivial amount below FAP I think offering FAP so you can close out other bids is a better strategy if you are going to offer so close to it. It has after all gone at FAP not miles over so it was priced correctly, possibly even a little low (because otherwise if one of the two bidders hadn't been a friend maybe they'd have asked for best and final?)

Lesson for the next house hopefully. Good luck.

ElsieMonkey

There's only so much you can second guess others who may/may not be involved in also viewing/bidding, the vendors response, the EA tactics etc. It will drive you crazy, I know because I've been there. Best to just forget all that and always only offer what you can afford and feel the property is worth, and don't put yourself in a position where you've put all your eggs in one basket and are left hanging in limbo - then if it works out great. If it doesn't, it wasn't meant to be and there will be something else. Good luck

Leory

I'm sure a lot of more experienced house buyers on here have missed out on houses they really liked.

I'm far from experienced but when we bought our current property we missed out on what we thought was an amazing house. Don't get me wrong - it still is an amazing house and we would have loved it there, but it forced us into looking at alternatives and we wouldn't have found the great house we are in now if it wasn't for that setback.

ajp1309

Just wanted to say sorry you missed out on the house. We were in a similar situation. Found a house fell in love put in an offer. Offer declined so upped it to our maximum to then get a phone call saying they had accepted an offer of a cash buyer but did we want to up our offer. So we had to walk away and was gutted.

Fast forward 3 days later we see a sign pop up on a house, my husband pointed it out I was like now we cant afford that it wont be in our price range. Left it a week (kept looking on rightmove for the price) and it never came on s0 rang the estate agents.

Slightly over our budget but arranged a viewing, fell in love with it put an offer in 10% below asking price, vendor came back asking for another 5k we made another offer and next day they accepted so currently going through the process.

So you never know whats round the corner I am sure you will find something else you like, just keep looking and nagging the agents