Approaching seller after missing on through best and final offers

npd23

Hi all,

Would appreciate your thoughts on the below. We recently viewed a house that was pretty much 'the one' for us. It was listed for £250k which we thought was undervalued. The house had an open day with 15 people so we knew we had to put in a sizeable offer. We went with an offer of £275,000. The next day the EA rung to say the house went for tens of thousands more, so as a result we offered £300k as a counter offer. The EA said they can't reopen it and as it was best and final offers the opportunity to increase offers had gone.

My question is, if we were to put a note through the sellers door saying that we are aware the house has been sold but if anything falls through then we'd be happy to offer £300k and the estate agent is aware of our offer, would that be immoral or illegal?

The reason for doing this is more that the whole sale seemed odd to me, and I believe our offer of £300k would be accepted by the seller who I imagine would want the additional money. The price seems to have been undervalued to throw people off and I can't understand how an offer £50k over asking price would not be accepted.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I believe the house is worth around the £300k mark so would not be concerned with the additional £50k over asking.

Many thanks 

Sunsaru

If you were the person who had the offer accepted, started the ball rolling only to be elbowed out the way how would you feel??

hazyjo

It's not great tbh. They've accepted an offer. Just let the EA know you're next in line - many transactions fall through. If they swap to you, would you trust them not to do the same to you? Would they trust you not to drop the price close to exchange? I've turned down higher offers before, and held onto a buyer when I could have sold for a lot more after the chain part-collapsed a few times. Just seemed the honourable thing to do...

NameUnavailable

It's a dog eat dog world. Are you a dog or a dog? Be more dog.

Walker1

npd23 said:

The reason for doing this is more that the whole sale seemed odd to me, and I believe our offer of £300k would be accepted by the seller who I imagine would want the additional money. The price seems to have been undervalued to throw people off and I can't understand how an offer £50k over asking price would not be accepted.

Depends... you don’t know how much the seller has already accepted. Maybe the person that was accepted put in a fair offer straight away, instead of putting themselves in the position your now in.

AnotherJoe

OP In one part you say you'll pay £300k if the current deal falls through, in another part you imply you are looking for the seller to gazump the current buyer. ("cant believe they wont want the extra money)

So, what are you looking to do? Gazump or be on the back burner? Two very different things.

You also say "I can't understand how an offer £50k over asking price would not be accepted" but work that through slowly.

You said the EA told you it went for "tens of thousands more" than your £275k bid. So "tens" is in the plural, so that must be at least two tens, right?

So, price is at least £295k .

So your attempted gazump of £300k is no great shakes. Maybe £5k, eg  less than 2% ,  above the current bid.

Not £50k above the current price. Yes £50k above asking but it seems the current buyers bid is also £50k above asking.

Poppy9

You could just put a note through door saying if your current sale falls through you'd be happy to discuss buying but not mentioning money.  I don't get why EA under valued by so much though and why buyer accepted their marketing office as most do research before selling 

maxsteam

npd23 said:

The next day the EA rung to say the house went for tens of thousands more, so as a result we offered £300k as a counter offer. The EA said they can't reopen it and as it was best and final offers the opportunity to increase offers had gone.

My guess is that £300k isn't enough and you will be wasting your time and being a nuisance with your notes. Tens of thousands more than £275k sounds like more than £300k. If you think that the property is worth more than £300k, then it's likely that other people will think the same. You don't know the price (wait a few months, then you can find out) so, if you really want the property, why not offer £400k?

I was in a situation last year where I made an offer of £1k more than the asking/guide price. There was a deadline for offers but the estate agent came back to me (and, they said, to other parties whose bids were good enough) to give me a final chance to increase my offer before an extended deadline. I stated that, after careful consideration, I would stand by my offer and I would neither increase nor decrease the amount. My offer was accepted and the transaction was successfully completed.

I suspect that, if your £275k offer had been close to the highest offer, the estate agent would have contacted you and tried something similar to the above.

Nebulous2

We have just had something similar as sellers. We're in Scotland, where gazumping is much more unlikely. We had a bidding process, with 5 good bids.

People tried to ask us during viewing what we expected. We pointed out we expected it to go over valuation - but didn't know by how much and suggested. 'offer what it is worth to you.' 

Clearly with 5 offers, 4 are going to lose out. A person who missed it by £2k texted my wife in the middle of the night to offer £5k more. 

I responded in the morning, to thank them, say we were committed to the best offer, and if that person pulled out we would get back in touch. I also pointed out that they should correspond / offer through our solicitor as before.

hazyjo

There was a recent thread from someone very upset that someone else had an offer accepted after their "best and final offer" had been accepted. Unless anyone links to it before me, I'll search for it tomorrow when on my computer. You'll perhaps see it from the other side.

GDB2222

Poppy9 said:

You could just put a note through door saying if your current sale falls through you'd be happy to discuss buying but not mentioning money.  I don't get why EA under valued by so much though and why buyer accepted their marketing office as most do research before selling 

It is like starting an ebay listing at £0.01. It gets the punters interested, and gets competition going. The OP says there were 15 people viewing, so it worked.