Do we stand a chance against a cash buyer?

Siljie

Hi there,

My partner and I have had our eye on a 2 bed house for some time. It is in a good location for us, and we both like it a lot. However, it has a damp issue that would need about 7K to treat, and also it’s under probate.

We are needing to sell our current property to buy this house, but we put in an offer anyways a few weeks ago, just 5K under the asking price. From what we understood from the agents, it’s a very good offer (the highest I think at the time, and there was another “very low offer” from another buyer who wasn’t interested in increasing his offer). The problem was we weren’t proceedable then.

Fast forward to now, we have received 2 offers on our flat, and would like to proceed to sell it and buy that house. However, it now appears that there is a cash buyer who has offered a similar price to us for that house, and accordingly is going to revise it (upwards) in the next day or so. The estate agents have said that the sellers are strongly considering this cash offer.

We are feeling a bit demoralised at this point as we both like the house a lot and feel that they are likely to just go with the cash buyer. We are tempted to revise our offer upwards to meet the asking price, but wonder if this is a good idea, and whether it will make a difference. I also wonder whether it’s actually right for the agent to disclose how much people are offering, even if it is in the ball park range. Would this not just go on and on into a bidding war? It makes me feel rather resentful as well as we weren’t playing games and put in what we thought was a really decent and good offer. But perhaps that’s just how it goes, there’s competition and it’s upsetting to not be able to get what you want. This would be our 2nd time buying a property, so still rather new to the process.

Any thoughts, ideas and advice very welcome!

hazyjo

Do you know if the cash buyer is an investor, or if they'll be living in it themselves? If the former, I would suggest trying to endear yourselves to the vendors. Talk about you'd love to make it your home (to bring up kids? start a family? Anything you can add to make yourselves more appealing. If not a LL/investor, then I suppose it will come down to the highest offer.


If the cash offer was that good, they'd have said yes. I reckon it's much lower than yours and the EAs are stretching the truth. Don't quote me on it though lol.


EA can tell you what they like AFAIK.

Siljie

Hey Hazyjo,

Thanks for your reply. They are buying the property to live in, so just like us in that sense.

I am not familiar with the probate process, but it seems that the offers go to the lawyer/probate manager who will decide, not the family who would have inherited the property? However, we did write a nice offer letter at the time, and even arranged to have the damp specialist go down to do a survey on the work needed before we came up with our offer.

It does feel rather disconcerting as we wouldn’t have heard about this cash offer and that a sale may be concluded very soon, had we not gotten in touch with the estate agents to follow up on the house.

ACG

From my experience, cash buyers rarely turn out to be cash buyers.
They are usually raising finance against another property or where they are genuine cash buyers, as there is no lender involved and they are typically switched on business men, they lower their offer at the last minute at a point where everyone is financially and emotionally invested.

I would be reluctant to sell a house to a cash buyer having seen what I have over the years.

Siljie

Hi ACG,

That’s something positive, that cash buyers aren’t always seen as the most attractive!

Do you think it is a good idea to revise our offer upwards at this stage? We are very near the limit of what we can pay, and we can just about afford to raise the offer by £5K to meet the asking price. If that £5K makes the difference in terms of whether we can get the house or not, I think we might regret not raising our offer and losing out to the other buyer. But then again, the cash buyer might still be able to outbid us. In which case, is there a “good” strategy to go about this?

steampowered

It sounds like the EA is talking nonsense.

"Going" to revise the offer? Either the offer will be revised or it won't.

Personally I would sit tight unless you get something a bit more concrete or a firm counter-offer.

foxy-stoat

BS from the Estate Agent I think - stick with your top offer.

Siljie

Hi Steampowered,

Thanks for your reply.

Yes.. that’s probably the best thing to do at this point, actually, and then see what happens. It’s hard to stay objective and cool. It definitely helps to get some perspective on here.

Siljie

Hi Foxy-stoat,

Thanks for your advice.
I was just going to say to Steampowered that the estate agent we usually liaise with for the house is away at the moment, and it was his boss that got back to us with this news.

Yes, I think I will stick to my offer. Will update you all when I hear more tomorrow or day after.

Unicorn_cottage

I would do what hazyjo said can you write to the vendor and say you fell in love with the house etc - obviously be genuine etc and emphasise any good points about your position.

Out of interest your quote of £7k for damp issues - what is the quote for and what issues does the house have? Who did the quote?

Unicorn_cottage

EAs are there to get the best price for the vendor and of course the best commission for themselves so no surprise about trying to squeeze out revised offers.