Offer accepted and buyer wants seller to take house off the market...

Alison-J_2

I am now able to make an offer on the house that I want but last week a very low offer was accepted by the seller, I know she is desparate, and the buyer has asked her to take the house off the market. Can I ask the estate agent to approach her with my offer? I have to move on this asap if I am to try to buy this house. When a seller recieves an offer and takes the house off the market as she has done is there anything legally binding or is it a moral gazumping issue? If you can shed some light ... go for it!

selectcase

Strictly speaking you can put in an offer at any time even if its been taken off the market and the seller can quite legally accept you offer at any point before exchanging contracts.

The seller is probobly panicking over all the doom and gloom in the press about house prices and is worried they might drop massivly over the next few years.

Yes house prices will drop but no-one knows by how much?? I think around 10% this year not including inflation etc but this is not an hpc thread and I am rambling

merlinthehappypig

No legal obstacles to this. The seller can do what they like provided that they haven't exchanged contracts. You can make an offer and the estate agent will have to pass it on.

You will get different advice on the moral issues, but it is a business transaction, not a game.

We accepted an offer when we sold in April. The next day we got another offer, £6000 higher. After a sleepless night we decided that morally we ought to stick with the original buyer at the original price, but I miss that £6000 now!

selectcase

merlinthehappypig wrote: »

No legal obstacles to this. The seller can do what they like provided that they haven't exchanged contracts. You can make an offer and the estate agent will have to pass it on.

You will get different advice on the moral issues, but it is a business transaction, not a game.

We accepted an offer when we sold in April. The next day we got another offer, £6000 higher. After a sleepless night we decided that morally we ought to stick with the original buyer at the original price, but I miss that £6000 now!

I must agree with this as we did the same and are sticking with the first lower offer under principle

KITCHEN1_2

You can make still make your offer ,BUT the vendor needs to be sure your offer will be sufficiently in excess of the other one for the other buyer can look to the seller to reimburse all of the costs that they have incurred to that point on the transaction.
At this time there is a contract between the seller and the other buyer and the fact it is verbal makes it no less of a contract. It is implied that in such an agreement that "taking the house off the market" is a prerequisite required by the buyer before he starts taking on the typical costs involved in the purchase.Breach of that contract makes the seller liable for the other parties costs.
It's been a long time since it happened to me ,but i went to small claims court on this issue and won my costs back.

I just noted the commnt "last week" ,that might mean the other party has not yet gone very far with this transaction.

pink_muppet

Thats interesting Kitchen, for a long time now I thought there should be something like this in place, ie once you put an offer in and it is accepted, if either party pulled out of the deal before exchange they should be legally liable for the all costs incurred up to that point, its about time this was made law

Catblue

One third of house sales fall through, so there is no reason why you cannot make the EA aware of the fact that you are still interested. If the sale collapses, they will come running to you first.

You could write to the EA and state that you are now in a position to proceed, you realise the offer by the other buyers has been accepted, but would be interested in the event that the house sale does not go through.

I would leave it like that.

slipp_digby

KITCHEN1 wrote: »

You can make still make your offer ,BUT the vendor needs to be sure your offer will be sufficiently in excess of the other one for the other buyer can look to the seller to reimburse all of the costs that they have incurred to that point on the transaction.
At this time there is a contract between the seller and the other buyer and the fact it is verbal makes it no less of a contract. It is implied that in such an agreement that "taking the house off the market" is a prerequisite required by the buyer before he starts taking on the typical costs involved in the purchase.Breach of that contract makes the seller liable for the other parties costs.
It's been a long time since it happened to me ,but i went to small claims court on this issue and won my costs back.

I just noted the commnt "last week" ,that might mean the other party has not yet gone very far with this transaction.

kitchen, I have never heard this before, at what point is the sale were you at when this happened?

i was under the impression that until the formal contracts were drawn up by the solicitors there is nothing binding and the vendor isn't liable?!

boinging_2

Just put the offer in. When I was selling, I had another offer a week after I'd accepted an offer for nearly 10K more! The EA tried to hide the offer from me... Luckily the people also came directly to us to offer. Long story short we sold to the higher offer.

CB1979_2

just be prepared that you could be on the receiving end of similar happening to you if they get another offer in a couple of weeks.

however i'd go direct to the homeowners if you can go round there and explain your situation.

merlinthehappypig

slipp_digby wrote: »

kitchen, I have never heard this before, at what point is the sale were you at when this happened?

i was under the impression that until the formal contracts were drawn up by the solicitors there is nothing binding and the vendor isn't liable?!

Me too.

House chains fall apart all the time for a variety of reasons. You may have had a specific reason why you were able to win, but in general terms this advice is not correct. Buyers and sellers in England and Wales can pull out any time before exchange of contracts for any reason with no legal liability. It's a little different in Scotland.