Estate agents renegotiating after offer is withdrawn

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

leespot wrote: »

Make it clear to them they you're not withdrawing an offer - they cancelled your offer by accepting a higher rental price from someone else. You are asking when your now (invalid) reservation fee will be refunded. They cancelled the reservation, not you. You don't even need to explain to them why you longer want the property.

They didn't accept a higher price from someone else; they asked for a higher price from the OP.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

saajan_12 wrote: »

No, in general if you pay a deposit and then withdraw your offer, you should lose the deposit, especially if they (subsequently) accept. Otherwise what is the deposit for if it doesn't lock you in?


The point here is that THEY REJECTED your offer. Therefore, they can't keep the deposit. Further, THEY said they would refund your deposit, and on RELIANCE of that, you secured another property etc, so now they are breaching that second agreement to refund.

Rejected is not necessarily the right term if what they said is "X? Can they go to X+50?"

leespot

The agent rejected the offer put forward by the OP - there really isn't anything more to it than that. They owe the OP their reservation fee back.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

leespot wrote: »

The agent rejected the offer put forward by the OP - there really isn't anything more to it than that. They owe the OP their reservation fee back.

I'm not sure that making a counter offer is a rejection. It depends how it was worded. The agent, incidentally, can't reject or accept anything, he is only a go-between.

leespot

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

I'm not sure that making a counter offer is a rejection. It depends how it was worded. The agent, incidentally, can't reject or accept anything, he is only a go-between.

Making a counter offer is automatic rejection of the original offer - you are saying you want more than the starting offer, which then puts it back in the court of the OP to either accept the increase or walk away. They chose the latter, and now they are entitled to their money back. The fact that the agent called back later to accept the original offer is irrelevant.

The agent can be authorized to accept or reject offers by the LL of the property - in much the same way a LL can give permission to the agent to carry out repairs to a property up to a certain cost, without needing to wait for permission from them.

Surrey_EA

I do not deal with rentals, so this may be a silly question, why would you pay a £600 reservation fee before you had established whether you could agree a price for the monthly rent?

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

leespot wrote: »

Making a counter offer is automatic rejection of the original offer - you are saying you want more than the starting offer, which then puts it back in the court of the OP to either accept the increase or walk away. They chose the latter, and now they are entitled to their money back. The fact that the agent called back later to accept the original offer is irrelevant.

The agent can be authorized to accept or reject offers by the LL of the property - in much the same way a LL can give permission to the agent to carry out repairs to a property up to a certain cost, without needing to wait for permission from them.

They can be authorised to, yes. We don't know if they were.

And you certainly would be within your rights to walk away from the deal. Whether you would be entitled to the return of a deposit which you had paid in the hope of a deal being concluded would surely depend on the wording of whatever you signed when paying that deposit,and the way in which the "rejection" was handled.

"He wants to know if you can go to 150" is different from "I reject your offer."

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

Surrey_EA wrote: »

I do not deal with rentals, so this may be a silly question, why would you pay a £600 reservation fee before you had established whether you could agree a price for the monthly rent?

I thought that was odd but assumed it must be a thing now. I wouldn't like to do it.

G_M

Surrey_EA wrote: »

I do not deal with rentals, so this may be a silly question, why would you pay a £600 reservation fee before you had established whether you could agree a price for the monthly rent?

I agree it's strange, and I wouldn't do it.

but I suspect it's driven by demand for rental properties which in some areas can be off the market even before they are on!

Tenant sees new advert, rings up, told "it's gone." So when an available property is found there's a lot of pressure to 'bag it' for yourself (with a deposit) asap.

Having said that, if this were an area wih high demand like that, then trying to negotiate on the rent would be a long shot......