Made an offer

Flugelhorn

sammyjammy said:

Flugelhorn said:

lookstraightahead said:

C1996 said:

lookstraightahead said:

There is nothing you can do unfortunately. There are lots of vendors out there who want to get more than the house is worth, and risk having it down valued, or genuinely do think their house must be worth more for someone to snap it up so quickly.

if I were the vendor I would look at your situation - are you chain free, do you have your deposit ready, are you ready to move. If so, i would accept your offer because life moves on and I would be happy to be moving as who knows what's going to happen to the market.

if I were the buyer (you), I would have first looked at whether the vendors situation suits you - are they ready to move? Are they going to spend forever looking for their (dream 😖) home? Are they just going to leave you hanging around and use you as a 'tool' to help them buy?

if I were you, and I'm not (as it risks / means losing a property you want), I would tell them thank you very much and walk away. 

It does work both ways of course - they might find people offering well over and then pulling out, or the house being down valued, etc.

it's not a fair game really is it. Of course the agent will now tell viewers there is already an offer on the table to try and sway others.

I pulled out of a sale as the agent said someone else had made a higher offer. It's still on the market now.

The vendors are selling their deceased parents property so they also wanted to discuss it amongst themselves as siblings. The estate agent said that the vendor was pleased with the offer but wanted to continue with the other viewings.

Wish you had said this in the first place, what is the probate situation? Are they actually ready to sell? If not you could be hanging on for literally years.

Quite! probate is never straightforward, unless there is only one exec and one beneficiary you will never get a quick answer - also as @lookstraig@lookstraightahead says it could take ages, I viewed one a few weeks ago where they hadn't even applied for probate let alone got it 

Its not always like that, my Nan dies March 2020 and despite no house deeds and house not being digitally registered the inheritance of five children and 13 grandchildren was paid out in full within 9 months.

I know it is always like that - I got probate 2 months after a death, put the house on the market and sale completed in another 2 months - however that is  unusual, most take a lot more, the key here was the lack of even an application for probate, I got the feeling that they were jumping on the seller's market bandwagon while they could

peterhjohnson

lookstraightahead said:

I don't think everyone tries to get as much as possible,

Agreed. On my last move, I had a clear idea of how much I needed to spend and how much I could borrow. That gave me a floor price for the old house. I accepted an offer from a cash buyer for £9k over that floor price but I "could" have got £7k more from someone who said they'd "try and get a mortgage". My cash buyer was absolutely no trouble whatsoever even though my purchase slowed things up.

gozaimasu

I think it depends on what agents are doing? If they are overpricing and expecting to accept a lower offer, then asking price makes people think it's "undervalued". If they are pricing realistically then it's going to lead to a quicker sale with buyers offering asking because all of the other agents in the area are overpricing.

I sold a house with an agent who priced realistically and the other agents were wanting to list at a higher price with a view to accepting the realistic price of the other agent. First buyer still offered under, but the second buyer offered asking and I accepted. I did have that initial reaction of "oh no I could have gotten more" but ultimately it meant a quicker sale without all the back and forth of offers and I wanted to get out of there asap.

robatwork

Put yourself in the seller's shoes. You're selling your house for £200,000. EA says there are 5 viewings lined up over the weekend. 10am Saturday someone offers £200,000. 

EA almost certainly tells you to proceed with Sunday's viewings too as in his experience you may get £220,000. With the extra you could suddenly land your dream house that you couldn't previously quite afford. Or move into a lower mortgage rate so pay 0.5% less adding up to thousands over 20 years. 

Would you really cancel the viewings and accept a possible hit of £20,000 for particularly ethical reasons?

lookstraightahead

robatwork said:

Put yourself in the seller's shoes. You're selling your house for £200,000. EA says there are 5 viewings lined up over the weekend. 10am Saturday someone offers £200,000. 

EA almost certainly tells you to proceed with Sunday's viewings too as in his experience you may get £220,000. With the extra you could suddenly land your dream house that you couldn't previously quite afford. Or move into a lower mortgage rate so pay 0.5% less adding up to thousands over 20 years. 

Would you really cancel the viewings and accept a possible hit of £20,000 for particularly ethical reasons?

If I had a shop and a suit was on sale for £500 and someone came in to buy it on the first day, I wouldn't ask them to wait til I checked whether others might like to offer more the following week.
If the op ticks the other boxes which I find more important (ready to move with no chain etc) then I would accept yes.
in this particular case the house is a probate sale so let's hope all that's in order first anyway.

to be fair everyone knows this will be a ploy for negotiation this week by the vendors and the EA. 

It will be so much better when the greed has gone from the housing market and offers and interest start reducing. 

Thrugelmir

lookstraightahead said:

robatwork said:

Put yourself in the seller's shoes. You're selling your house for £200,000. EA says there are 5 viewings lined up over the weekend. 10am Saturday someone offers £200,000. 

EA almost certainly tells you to proceed with Sunday's viewings too as in his experience you may get £220,000. With the extra you could suddenly land your dream house that you couldn't previously quite afford. Or move into a lower mortgage rate so pay 0.5% less adding up to thousands over 20 years. 

Would you really cancel the viewings and accept a possible hit of £20,000 for particularly ethical reasons?

If I had a shop and a suit was on sale for £500 and someone came in to buy it on the first day, I wouldn't ask them to wait til I checked whether others might like to offer more the following week.

Wouldn't be a very profitable shop if you only had one item for sale at a time. 

RS2OOO

OP,

We had a viewing booked for 15:30 on a house being marketed at Offers Over £450k.
We knew 100% we wanted this house and were willing to pay as much as we could afford it took to get it, with an initial offer of £460k.
There was a viewing before us at 15:00.

At 15:25 whilst standing on the street we received a phone call from Estate Agent saying Vendor has cancelled our viewing as she has accepted an offer from the previous viewer. 

The previous viewer had offered asking price of £450k and the vendor accepted. 

We were absolutely gutted, and in desperation still went ahead and offered £460k "subject to internal viewing and contract". 

The Vendor declined as she didn't want to go back on her word to the previous viewer.

Estate Agent said they always advise vendors never to accept any offer directly from a viewer.

Which also means your vendor not accepting the offer could well be due to following advice of the Estate Agent to continue with booked viewings, even though the vendor might be happy with the offer and prepared to accept.

C1996

RS2OOO said:

OP,

We had a viewing booked for 15:30 on a house being marketed at Offers Over £450k.
We knew 100% we wanted this house and were willing to pay as much as we could afford it took to get it, with an initial offer of £460k.
There was a viewing before us at 15:00.

At 15:25 whilst standing on the street we received a phone call from Estate Agent saying Vendor has cancelled our viewing as she has accepted an offer from the previous viewer. 

The previous viewer had offered asking price of £450k and the vendor accepted. 

We were absolutely gutted, and in desperation still went ahead and offered £460k "subject to internal viewing and contract". 

The Vendor declined as she didn't want to go back on her word to the previous viewer.

Estate Agent said they always advise vendors never to accept any offer directly from a viewer.

Which also means your vendor not accepting the offer could well be due to following advice of the Estate Agent to continue with booked viewings, even though the vendor might be happy with the offer and prepared to accept.

Thank you for sharing, I will just wait to see what the outcome is. Hope you find/ have found your dream home

robatwork

lookstraightahead said:

robatwork said:

Put yourself in the seller's shoes. You're selling your house for £200,000. EA says there are 5 viewings lined up over the weekend. 10am Saturday someone offers £200,000. 

EA almost certainly tells you to proceed with Sunday's viewings too as in his experience you may get £220,000. With the extra you could suddenly land your dream house that you couldn't previously quite afford. Or move into a lower mortgage rate so pay 0.5% less adding up to thousands over 20 years. 

Would you really cancel the viewings and accept a possible hit of £20,000 for particularly ethical reasons?

If I had a shop and a suit was on sale for £500 and someone came in to buy it on the first day, I wouldn't ask them to wait til I checked whether others might like to offer more the following week.
If the op ticks the other boxes which I find more important (ready to move with no chain etc) then I would accept yes.
in this particular case the house is a probate sale so let's hope all that's in order first anyway.

to be fair everyone knows this will be a ploy for negotiation this week by the vendors and the EA. 

It will be so much better when the greed has gone from the housing market and offers and interest start reducing. 

Is that your example argument - an item for sale in a retail shop?

In this case the shop owner immediately accepts consideration in the form of payment for the goods, whether it's £500 in full or a £50 deposit. That way the contract is formed.

As you well know our house buying system is at best daft. There is a price, an offer, but no consideration from the buyer to the vendor at that time. So it's irrelevant in contract law as no contract is formed. Seller doesn't have to sell and buyer doesn't have to buy. 

In some countries the buyer pays a "deposit" immediately, and the property is secured. Much more straightforward and no guzumping shenanigans. Half the posts to this forum would disappear if we had this system, but too many vested interests making easy money to change it. 

badger09

C1996 said:

lookstraightahead said:

There is nothing you can do unfortunately. There are lots of vendors out there who want to get more than the house is worth, and risk having it down valued, or genuinely do think their house must be worth more for someone to snap it up so quickly.

if I were the vendor I would look at your situation - are you chain free, do you have your deposit ready, are you ready to move. If so, i would accept your offer because life moves on and I would be happy to be moving as who knows what's going to happen to the market.

if I were the buyer (you), I would have first looked at whether the vendors situation suits you - are they ready to move? Are they going to spend forever looking for their (dream 😖) home? Are they just going to leave you hanging around and use you as a 'tool' to help them buy?

if I were you, and I'm not (as it risks / means losing a property you want), I would tell them thank you very much and walk away. 

It does work both ways of course - they might find people offering well over and then pulling out, or the house being down valued, etc.

it's not a fair game really is it. Of course the agent will now tell viewers there is already an offer on the table to try and sway others.

I pulled out of a sale as the agent said someone else had made a higher offer. It's still on the market now.

The vendors are selling their deceased parents property so they also wanted to discuss it amongst themselves as siblings. The estate agent said that the vendor was pleased with the offer but wanted to continue with the other viewings.

As I said earlier:


 The Executor(s) of the deceased's estate have a legal duty to safeguard the estate from any loss, and to act in the best interests of the beneficiaries.  

Accepting an offer from the 1st person to view the property might fit that definition, but, it might not. IMO, they are acting correctly by allowing scheduled viewings to take place. In their position, I would be doing exactly the same.