Seller rejected my first offer at asking price - help!

Carl2510

Just leave the offer on the table and if they get more they get more and you’ll find another place, don’t let people like this drag more money out of you.

Tim11111000111

A couple of thoughts:

I think it's a scummy move to reject an offer at asking price (assuming it was originally an asking price, not an offers over price). That said, people are scummy and if they think they can get more they will. How many people would turn down £15k perfectly legal free money just to avoid being a bit rude to a stranger?

A house is worth whatever is someone is willing to pay for it. I would try to avoid letting the mind games get to you too much. What price are you actually prepared to pay? If you walk away now and the house eventually sells for £1k, £5k or £15k more than you offered, will you be relieved you dodged that bullet or kicking yourself for not upping your offer when you had the chance?

If you're putting in a high offer, make sure you have the funds to cover it. Any mortgage LTV will be based on the mortgage provider's valuation; if you offer above this you need to make up the difference yourself.

I don't think you're do yourself any favours by leaving your offer officially on the table. If you take the offer off the table and the seller comes crawling back to you, then you know they haven't had any other offers and are beginning to get desperate... 

badger09

Tim11111000111 said:

A couple of thoughts:

I think it's a scummy move to reject an offer at asking price (assuming it was originally an asking price, not an offers over price). That said, people are scummy and if they think they can get more they will. How many people would turn down £15k perfectly legal free money just to avoid being a bit rude to a stranger?

A house is worth whatever is someone is willing to pay for it. I would try to avoid letting the mind games get to you too much. What price are you actually prepared to pay? If you walk away now and the house eventually sells for £1k, £5k or £15k more than you offered, will you be relieved you dodged that bullet or kicking yourself for not upping your offer when you had the chance?

If you're putting in a high offer, make sure you have the funds to cover it. Any mortgage LTV will be based on the mortgage provider's valuation; if you offer above this you need to make up the difference yourself.

I don't think you're do yourself any favours by leaving your offer officially on the table. If you take the offer off the table and the seller comes crawling back to you, then you know they haven't had any other offers and are beginning to get desperate... 

We did almost precisely that
2 identical, well below asking, offers on same day end of August. We immediately rejected both but told EA no bidding war, just best & final offers in 48 hours. 

1 - (family, viewed twice, loved house, theirs just SSTC) offered £1001 over asking
2) (couple, offered 2 hours after viewing, would probably develop house & move on, could bridge) offered £4K above asking
We accepted offer from 1 & they were delighted. EA phoned to say 2 had said ‘will they change their mind if I offer another £10k?’ So additional £14k in total. We said no. 

Stupid? Maybe
The right decision? We think so. 

Sale completed 8th Jan. No messing from our buyers. They messaged 2 hours after collecting keys on Friday to say they were finally in, surrounded by boxes, but they love it. 

Money isn’t everything😉

OP
I would withdraw my offer & walk away from this one. There will be others. 

d2446679

Withdraw the original offer and make a lower one.

steampowered

This seller is not proceedable. They are not going to even start searching for a property until March. There are lots of threads on this forum where sellers in their position accepted an offer then took 6-12months plus to find somewhere.

I would tell the agent that you are not willing to negotiate on price until the seller has found another property and is proceedable. 

It might be worth making an offer above asking price to secure a dream property where the sellers are actually ready to sell. Not at this point. They have no incentive to accept an offer until they are ready to move.

lookstraightahead

Deleted_User said:

If they are asking for more than what it was valued at then theres a good chance your mortgage company will undervalue it. Worth thinking about especially if you don't have the funds to cover the shortfall. 

I agree with this. All this negotiating from over ambitious sellers and buyers letting their hearts rule their heads, only for the mortgage valuation to be lower. Silly and shortsighted of estate agents to wind everyone up in the first place. You then get a situation where the vendor thinks their house is worth more so won't budge, and a buyer who can't afford to fork out the difference themselves. Ad Infinitum.

AnotherJoe

anselld said:

Offers over X.  Offering X is not an asking price offer as the title suggests.

It was on for X, OP offered X, that was rejected and then vendors changed the listing to Offers Over.

"they've since changed the listing to 'offers over xxx' (the original asking price)"

My emphasis

Jumblebumble

AnotherJoe said:

I hate sellers who do this. They are pulling your chain. I also suspect this is a seller more likely to gazump you later on.

Withdraw your offer as all its doing is giving them an advantage, not you*, tell the EA you are looking elsewhere.

* because any other viewers they can say "we already have an AP offer so you'll need to go more" so you are unlikely to win, at least if you withdraw it you leave them hanging wondering if you'll still be around.

I totally agree.
 This seller is probably related to the imbecele who tried it on us. His excuse was that the house would show up under a lower search criterion on RightMove  ( ie in a search for houses under 200k 
Anyone who does this is likely to play the fool later and we did not progress
The estate agents were unimpressed

Thrugelmir

steampowered said:

This seller is not proceedable. They are not going to even start searching for a property until March. There are lots of threads on this forum where sellers in their position accepted an offer then took 6-12months plus to find somewhere.

Market is quickly coming to life now. Plenty of new listings every day, 

Mickey666

House buying/selling is all about negotiation, usually by rank amateurs who have little or no experience of such things (as proven by many of the posts on here) between many different types of people with many different motivations.  Circumstances change, minds change and what is perfectly sensible for one party might be incomprehensible to the other, so frustration ensues.

In this case, I can understand the sellers position.  They've marketed the house early and quickly had an offer for the full asking price.  Because they're in no rush (given they can't even start looking for themselves until March) they might reasonably think such a full, quick offer suggests they've pitched their asking price too low.  So, because they're in nor rush, why not invite 'offers over' and see what happens?  Is this really messing the OP about or is it simply the seller trying to maximise their sale price . . . which is what we all try to do isn't it? 

So yes, very frustrating for the OP but perfectly understandable on the part of the seller.  That's just how it goes.  The trick is not to make things personal or become emotionally involved . . . which is easier said than done of course, but it's why things become messy when a potential buyer has found their 'dream home'.   The thing to remember is that there are a lot of houses out there and hundreds of them are potential 'dream homes'.  But again, easier said than done.

As for sellers messing serious buyers about.  It can work both ways.  A work colleague once found himself being messed about by a very nasty seller (well, this was how he told the story anyway).  Apparently he'd had his initial offer refused and then all the usual tricks to entice him to up his offer by about £20k, which he could just about afford.  The price was agreed and the usual rigmarole started - searches, survey etc.  Weeks into all this, the seller came back and said they'd had another offer and would need another £10k to continue.  This pushed my colleague over his already stretched budget and he was understandably furious.  So - and I'm not advocating this sort of thing! - he AGREED to the additional £10k but started looking for another house, fully intending to string the seller along before pulling out of the sale altogether.  A couple of weeks later the seller, presumably thinking he had a soft target, said the 'other buyer' had now offered another £10k.  My colleague again agreed and just pretended to be continuing with the purchase, stringing things out as long as he could.  Meanwhile, he had found another house and had an offer accepted.  Eventually, he could not string the original seller along any more and he pulled out of the purchase just before exchange.  No discussion, no reason, no lower offer, just pulled out.  He eventually completed on the alternative house and the original house wasn't sold for another nine months!