Love a house that is SSTC, what would you do?

Chilli6

I kind of think the morality side will fall on the sellers. Id be tempted to approach them saying how keen you are and to let you know if they have problems with current buyers. I'd say you've acted fine in doing so. If they then ask what your offer would be it's up to their own morals as to what they do.
As a buyer (if I were the already accepted offer) I'd be gutted and annoyed with the seller but that's for the seller to consider, not you

[Deleted User]

steve866 said:

Just make an offer. Nothing to feel guilty about, the other buyer is a developer, they are in business and used to competition.

Theres nothing to say that the other buyer is a developer, the OP has just suggested that it might be a developer, as the property is a do-er upper. 

eve824

So little update.
We have one offer on our house that came in yesterday, and been told another couple are in final negotiations with buyers on their house and will be putting an offer in shortly. So fingers crossed on that front.
We have decided to approach the vendors of the other house this weekend. As time is of the essence we are considering knocking on their door and having a chat, but I am concerned that is too forward? Alternatively I could try and post a little hand written note through. The only issue is the house is set back on a wraparound plot with a gate, so it feels a bit like trespassing to get to the front door? I think I am just going to go along the lines of, we really love your house, we want to create a family home here, we are proceedable and can afford the asking price, if you have any problems with your current buyers please let us know. 

Thrugelmir

eve824 said:

  we are proceedable and can afford the asking price, if you have any problems with your current buyers please let us know. 

Telling the EA is sufficient. I'd be pretty peeved if a total stranger turned up on our doorstep out of the blue. People use EA's to avoid direct contact for good reasons.
Your prospective buyer hasn't even obtained their mortgage yet. The train has well and truly pulled out. 

hazyjo

God no, don't knock on their door. I'd hate that.

And you don't want to make their property your family home, you wanted to rebuild didn't you (or at least mainly rebuild)? So you've really not got that card to play! If they're persuaded to go with you for sentimental reasons then find out you've bulldozed the lot, I should imagine they'd be rather upset!

UnderOffer

Oh please don’t knock, if you really have to, just put a note through the door with contact details, Keep it simple. Then leave it up to them to make contact with you either acknowledging your note or contacting you direct if their buyers pull out, don’t expect anything else. 

eve824

Fair enough - I was going with note but a couple of colleagues said they would knock!

Hazyjo - no - I've never said I will bulldoze the house - far from it. Just refurbish what is there as it's very dated.

hazyjo

eve824 said:

Hazyjo - no - I've never said I will bulldoze the house - far from it. Just refurbish what is there as it's very dated.

Fair dos, I had thought it was more about the plot but have realised since rereading you do actually want to refurb the existing house.

Swasterix

Just to play devils advocate...

Maybe the other buyers aren’t property developers? 

Maybe they love the plot/house/location even more than you do?
Maybe by writing your letter/knocking on the door, they will lose the house of their dreams and be even more gutted than you are now? Do you care? 

I’m getting the feeling that you are secretly hoping that by contacting the sellers they will drop their existing buyers and sell to you. Don’t pretend that if you go through with what you’re proposing, and the sellers offer the house to you, you wouldn’t snap their hands off. It seems to me that you’re looking for validation for what you’re proposing to do, under the guise of it being an innocent enquiry. 

It makes no difference to anyone here which way you decide to go, but let’s be honest and just call it what it is - an attempt at gazumping. It’s not illegal, maybe not even immoral, but only you can decide whether you can live with it or not. 

eve824

Just a quick update on this. We dropped a handwritten note through the vendors postbox at the weekend, just saying we really liked the house and please let us know if you have any issues with your current buyers.

He sent a really lovely email to us last night saying thank you for your letter and we will let you know if anything were to happen to the current sale. He explained that he was selling the house as executor on behalf of his uncle, who passed recently. Which is very sad but also meant there was no chain. Even more gutted!

So there's nothing more we can do, but I am glad I reached out as I am pretty hopeful now we would be contacted first if the sale does fall through. We have a couple of offers on the table for ours so need to decide on which one to accept and move forwards from there, to try and find another house. Fingers crossed something else will come up, not sure how long the buyers will give us to find a house.