Sale agreed on my house 7 months ago, but could get more now. What should I do?

zagubov

I admire your bravery confidence that this is a good time to gamble on house values in the middle stages of a global catastrophe. What you're considering sounds about as sensible to me as switching parachutes during a skydive.
There's an old saying about a "bird in the hand".

NameUnavailable

Pull out. If you sell you will always begrudge the idea that you have undersold your home, plus you need to possibly rethink your expectations for what you are seeking next.

HNHN

I really think that the house buying/selling process in England has to be changed - so many people have been messed around by the other party and surprisingly, a lot think that it's ok to do so.

The lesson learned from this thread is never ever agree to wait long after the offer has been accepted. I would give 1 month max but I personally would not bother to make an offer on a house if the owner hasn't found anywhere to move yet.

The OP could remarket it, then find a new buyer and maybe a few months in, the buyer pulls out as the price is dropping, then the whole chain is collapsing and the process would start all over again. I believe in Karma.

george4064

What is the agreed sale price? Just want to understand if £20-£25k is a small or big % of the agreed sale price.

If you’ve done your research and you’re pretty certain you can get more of it, maybe approach your buyer and ask if they’ll up their offer half way?

Either way, if you’ve been looking for 8 months and haven’t secured anywhere yet then it sounds like you’re doing it wrong!? Unless you have very particular/unusual requirements?

FWIW, if I was your buyer I would’ve got bored and pulled out ages ago. If I was your patient buyer and you came along asking for more money, I would’ve declined and pulled out of the purchase.

BikingBud

potatosalad said:

Hi,

I put my house up for sale 7 months ago and sold it within a week. We got 3 offers and went to best and final, and it sold for £1k over asking price. Since then, house prices and demand in my area have climbed massively, and I'm confident I could get about £20-25k more if I were to sell it now. My buyer has been extremely patient during the process as we've still been unsuccessful in finding somewhere to buy (we have offered on 8 houses but lost out on all of them). However, I am now really conscious of the fact that I'm selling my house for substantially less than it's actually worth.

What are my options in this situation? I really don't want to proceed any further with selling my house for such a low value. Should I just speak with my estate agent and be honest with them about my predicament and see what they suggest? 

Thanks a lot in advance!

At the end of the day your level of confidence will sway your decision but as others have mentioned the karma bus comes round fairly often. 

It's easy to see what properties were previously listed at. Anyone doing their homework will research all that, see a sale was curtailed, see the relisting and wonder what has changed to suddenly drive the price up.

And I am confident I would be aiming around previous listing price. I know there are some that continue to believe in never-ending HPI but the market influences are changing significantly.

Be brave and show us the house so you can get some honest feedback.

Loza2016

A house near us went on the market 2 months ago for £325 Sstc within 7 days. 

Roll on about 6 weeks & the Sstc sign came down & was re listed for £345 sold again within 2 weeks. 

It’s a risk only you can decide to take 

BikingBud

Loza2016 said:

A house near us went on the market 2 months ago for £325 Sstc within 7 days. 

Roll on about 6 weeks & the Sstc sign came down & was re listed for £345 sold again within 2 weeks. 

It’s a risk only you can decide to take 

"Sold" or "SSTC" ?
Who cancelled the previous agreement?
You only know the price paid when the stats come up on the LR site.

Loza2016

BikingBud said:

Loza2016 said:

A house near us went on the market 2 months ago for £325 Sstc within 7 days. 

Roll on about 6 weeks & the Sstc sign came down & was re listed for £345 sold again within 2 weeks. 

It’s a risk only you can decide to take 

"Sold" or "SSTC" ?
Who cancelled the previous agreement?
You only know the price paid when the stats come up on the LR site.

SSTC and for the new price according to someone in the know. Didn’t say why first sale fell through. 

Just an example how hiking the price doesn’t put others off. 

[Deleted User]

potatosalad said:

Thanks everyone for the financial (and moral) advice! Here are my thoughts on some of the suggestions...

I promise that the lack of movement from myself in 7 months isn't through lack of trying. We are looking for houses in an incredibly competitive area; every single one of the eight houses we've offered on has gone to best and final offers and we've offered as much as £20k over the asking price (>£15k on four of them!). So on this point, I have absolutely no guilt about "holding up" the sale as some people have suggested. There is really nothing more we could've done!

On the point from @Section62 that my property could go down in value, while this seems very unlikely to happen, yes I think I would absolutely accept this and not resent if a buyer dropped out for this reason! If my house comes down in value then so would other houses I'm looking at, and therefore I could still make the same kind of move. And realistically, if the house goes down in value then the mortgage company won't even give out a loan higher than that value anyway so the transaction inevitably crashes. 

@csgohan4 - I am very confident that I'd get at least this much more based on other houses nearby (often slightly smaller or in worse condition) being marketed for higher prices and selling really quickly. I really have no doubt whatsoever that my house would sell very quickly and for a substantially increased price.

I do really appreciate the buyer's patience, although she has also threatened to drop out of the sale several times and has made it clear that she is looking at other properties. I think she's now starting to realise that she's getting an absolute bargain on my house and hasn't found anywhere else nearly as good within her price range. As far as I'm aware, she hasn't spent anything on the purchase yet (no surveys have been done on my house), but I wouldn't be opposed to reimbursing her for the expenses she's had.

The stamp duty doesn't impact her as she's a first time buyer but does have a big impact on me. When I first sold, I was very much expecting to be moved before the stamp duty deadline, but I'm now looking at a bill of around £12-£15k on this. The prices of the houses I'm looking at have also massively increased too, which is making it hard to be competitive with the lower sale price agreed. If I had an extra £20k to work with then obviously this would help!

@m4x1ne made a really good point about how it bad looks if I have dropped out of the sale to get more money, and how unattractive that could be to future buyers. I am wondering if it might be the better bet for me to just cancel the transaction entirely and re-list it in a few months. I've got a lot going on in my life anyway so it wouldn't be the worst thing to remove the stress of this situation. 

I'm really not shying away that it could be seen as a horrible thing to do. I dread the thought of making the call to the estate agents, but seriously - it's £20,000+ I'm talking about! It's more than I'd save in a year. I don't know how so many people are completely nonchalant to the idea of just throwing this amount of money away (especially on a forum centred around sound financial decisions!). I think it's easy to give the moral advice and think this is greater than anything else, but £20k is a massive amount of money to ignore.

If the properties you are looking at are going to best and final offers and you aren’t able to offer enough extra then you’re looking at properties you cannot afford. You’ve wasted 7 months doing this.  

If you think you can get significantly more for your property then get it back on the market. Once you have another offer accepted then be realistic about what you can actually afford to buy or you’ll risk having another buyer dangling for 7+ months whilst you continue to be outbid. 

74jax

I would pull, and find somewhere.

You know you are happy-ish at selling at 25k under, so when the times comes pop it back in the market and you know you can accept anywhere the offer now to 25k more.

Tbh, I'd pull out and probably have a breather, no stress of holding people up and no stress of looking.