Gazumped - what to do

YoungBlueEyes

When I bought this house, the estate agent refused to mark it as SSTC until they were happy with my proof of funds and ID etc.  Standard procedure they assured me.

pinkshoes

How badly do you want the house? Are there others you are interested in?

It might be the vendors have decided they want more so asked the EA to see what they can do.

I would speak to the EA and tell them that as the offer was accepted and you don't want to be messed around further down the line by a "flaky" seller, then you are thinking of withdrawing your offer. See what they say.

MaryNB

YoungBlueEyes said:

When I bought this house, the estate agent refused to mark it as SSTC until they were happy with my proof of funds and ID etc.  Standard procedure they assured me.

The EA I was dealing with wouldn't mark it SSTC until I had my mortgage offer. A very stressful few weeks. 

Gavin83

bennimc said:

No don't think that it is likely it's been made up. Minded to put in a sealed bid offer of '£1,000 above theirs'. 

Personally I think this is a terrible idea. This gives them a great way of making up an offer to get as much as possible. If they say "We had an offer of £700k so they've happily accepted your offer of £701k would you be happy?"

There are a lot of potential options here. If I was in your shoes and I really wanted the house I'd likely just submit my original offer. If I was happy to look elsewhere I'd either submit a lower bid (maybe knock £10k off) or pull out entirely. Ultimately the choice of what you do is up to you though. 

I'm really not a fan of gazumping and it would put me off. However I can understand the sellers position on this. For the sake of a few thousand it's almost certainly not worth it but if you had a buyer offer say £50k above what the accepted offer was it would take a person with extremely strong morals (or someone mega rich) to ignore this.

FrugalCat

eddddy said:

bennimc said:

 
I have no idea if the other party genuinely exists or they have proved funds. 

I doubt that the estate agent has invented another party, because...

• It would be illegal for estate agent to 'make-up' buyers/offers (although quite a few estate agents don't seem to be too worried about breaking the law.

• The estate agent has your offer of £575k accepted - that probably means a commission fee of around £5750.  They won't want to risk irritating you into walking away, by messing you about with fictitious buyers/offers - and therefore losing £5750.

• If 'best and final' offers takes the price upto £600k - that's probably an extra £250 for the estate agent. I doubt they really want to faff about with this for 2 or 3 days, for the sake of an extra £250.  (They'd rather spend those 2 or 3 days trying to sell another property on their books, to earn them another £5750 instead).

Another scenario has a greedy buyer having second thoughts about accepting a low offer, empowered by an unscrupulous estate agent that believes that this buyer will cough up another x amount, no problem.

It's common for estate agents to be untruthful about information (just look at any listing), including other offers. The word-to-mouth they receive after successfully selling well above market price is a motivator. And an extra £250 for a few extra phone calls and a bit of patience is a pretty good remuneration.
Applied consistently over time, the extra payment will increase local prices and future commissions.


It's the agents job to poker and incite bidding wars, real or fake. The average buyer is an emotionally attached person of average intellect and little expertise - quite likely suffering from numerous biases at the point of the bidding.

I applaud OP for even assuming bluff. 

Slinky

Zerforax said:

What was the estate agent doing in all of this? If they accepted the offer a week ago, the property should've been delisted or shown as SSTC so then no more viewings? If it was a previous viewer then why didn't the estate agent mention that others were potentially keen?

Maybe the EA didn't realise they had other people who were potentially keen. We had an offer from someone the EA thought was unlikely to be forthcoming.

Maybe somebody needed to sell their own house to be able to proceed and that has now happened.

badger09

Zerforax said:

What was the estate agent doing in all of this? If they accepted the offer a week ago, the property should've been delisted or shown as SSTC so then no more viewings? If it was a previous viewer then why didn't the estate agent mention that others were potentially keen?

Many EAs won’t mark a property SSTC until ID, proof of affordability & solicitor’s details have been provided. Despite visiting 4 times, OP doesn’t mention having instructed solicitors. 

Ath_Wat

Well it's annoying, but the buyer has done a tremendous amount considering the offer was only accepted a week ago.  Four round trips in a week?  Commissioning builders for quotes this early on is also unusual - unless you are going to use those quotes to try and negotiate the price downwards, there's no need to have any of that done before you've moved in.  And that in itself might have made the vendor a bit concerned about the strength of your offer.

Why did you need builders in so soon?  Were you planning to remodel the house before moving into it?

Section62

Ath_Wat said:

...Commissioning builders for quotes this early on is also unusual...

Why did you need builders in so soon?  Were you planning to remodel the house before moving into it?

Absolutely normal in my experience.

Either with a view to getting work done when the property is empty and more convenient for both the trader and buyer, or to get an idea of cost of planned work to make sure the overall package is affordable and/or will provide sufficient uplift in value.

Some people also get a builder to have a look round in lieu of getting more detailed surveys.

Ath_Wat

Section62 said:

Ath_Wat said:

...Commissioning builders for quotes this early on is also unusual...

Why did you need builders in so soon?  Were you planning to remodel the house before moving into it?

Absolutely normal in my experience.

Either with a view to getting work done when the property is empty and more convenient for both the trader and buyer, or to get an idea of cost of planned work to make sure the overall package is affordable and/or will provide sufficient uplift in value.

Some people also get a builder to have a look round in lieu of getting more detailed surveys.

Well, yes, exactly.  Getting builders in for quotes this early could well be saying  to the vendor "I am not actually sure yet if I want to pay what I said I would", so if a better offer comes along, it's one more reason for them  to accept it.

if it's " a look round in lieu of getting more detailed surveys." then that wouldn't be "for quotes" - quotes implies they have some specific work in mind.