First to exchange

ohdarn

Hi everyone (again).
We have recently put our house back on the market. The original buyer is still very interested but we don't know when their legal paperwork will be completed, could be a day or two, could be months.
Our vendor has been very pleasant but they really need to complete on their purchase within the next four weeks at most (although this purchase is not part of our chain).

Our house is quite cheap, the houses around here attract a lot of BTL investors.
The house went back up on Friday afternoon, we have four viewings today and one alleged cash offer from someone who hasn't seen it.

Thing is, we don't want a bidding war, we don't want more than the asking price, we just want to get to exchange as fast as possible.
We've put it to the estate agent that we'll accept any offer that's at the asking price but we don't want it taken off the market. We just want to sell to the first person that exchanges contracts. We'll be honest with whoever wants to purchase it so they're aware of the situation.
But they seem to think that we can't do that and that if we accept an offer, we have to take it off the market and stick with that person.

So my question is, can we simply just keep the house on the market and have multiple people attempting to purchase it, or does it have to be taken off the market and focus on just one buyer?
Thanks.  

UnderOffer

BTL Investors or not, I doubt they’d want to spend money on conveyancing knowing they are in a contract race and may not get the house. 4 weeks is very tight, I think you’ll put more people off with this set up. 

ohdarn

UnderOffer said:

BTL Investors or not, I doubt they’d want to spend money on conveyancing knowing they are in a contract race and may not get the house. 4 weeks is very tight, I think you’ll put more people off with this set up. 

There's not really much option, if we lose the vendors house, we ain't going anywhere anyway.
The thing is though, are we allowed to do it?

user1977

Yes, you're allowed to have a contract race if everybody knows about it. 

AnotherJoe

Contract races used to be a thing I think one of my houses years back was bought in one but just from the scarcity of postings in here I suspect very rare these days. 

And so I suspect you won't find many interested buyers especially at a time when there's a mad rush on because of stamp duty 

hazyjo

You're looking for a needle in a haystack. Do a poll here if you can to see how many people here would entertain a contract race. Especially with an entirely unrealistic deadline. I'd literally be throwing my money away, so you could definitely count me out!

ohdarn

AnotherJoe said:

Contract races used to be a thing I think one of my houses years back was bought in one but just from the scarcity of postings in here I suspect very rare these days. 

And so I suspect you won't find many interested buyers especially at a time when there's a mad rush on because of stamp duty 

Thanks, as long as it's allowed then we'll give it a whirl.
There may not be many interested buyers, even if there's no interested buyers, it might hurry up our current buyer.
We've got quite a few viewings booked already and it's only been back up for 24 hours. There's no other houses in our area that are as cheap as ours, and it's in an area very popular with BTL investors, so you never know, it only takes one person with cash to move on it.

ohdarn

hazyjo said:

You're looking for a needle in a haystack. Do a poll here if you can to see how many people here would entertain a contract race. Especially with an entirely unrealistic deadline. I'd literally be throwing my money away, so you could definitely count me out!

Are the majority of the people on here BTL investors?
If not, the poll wouldn't accurately reflect our situation.
I don't think a month is an unrealistic deadline for a cash buyer, particularly if they own other properties in our local area.
Plus, it's not optional for us to have it go on for months again, so it's either four weeks or nothing.

GDB2222

Where is your home? Some parts of the country are red hot, whilst others less so. 

ohdarn

We're in the East Midlands. Usually we're a little bit behind what the rest of the country is doing.

We've just had a phone call from the estate agent to ask if we can set aside a day or two to do some block viewings as they're getting so many enquiries about it and the FTB that have just viewed t said they can barely get in anywhere to view because everything is disappearing within hours of being listed.

Pepod

How many viewings you have and how quickly properties become sale agreed is almost irrelevant to your situation. The only thing that really matters to you is that someone can exchange within 4 weeks. Whether a buyer is BTL or resi doesn't really matter either, as neither person will want to just throw money away to solicitors knowing that the house could go somewhere else on the last day. I think the best think you can do is to declare your deadline to buyers and if one is happy to take the risk and proceed then take it off the market for them. It still leaves them open to risk as if (from what you say) exchange is missed by one day due to an anomaly or hiccup then they will be out all their fees.