Estate agent requesting Proof of deposit/ mortgage agreement before offer accepted

eddddy · 10 October 2016 at 11:36AM

muffle123 wrote: »

It is a large amount as we have inherited money we are using for part of the deposit but some of that wont be in our account for another couple of weeks...

Hmmm... This is exactly the sort of thing that will worry EAs and vendors a lot.

If you've already mentioned this to the EA, that may be why they're taking a firm stance.

I expect the EA has dealt with many buyers who say this - and then the inheritance takes much longer than expected to arrive, is not as much as expected, or never arrives at all.

pops · 10 October 2016 at 11:51AM

Hey

From my recent experience with at least 4 different EA's. All of them have asked for proof of Deposit and an AIP before passing an offer over to the vendor.

The worst of which were Entwistle Green, who forced me into booking an appointment to "confirm my financial" validity to make the offer, when in actual fact they just wanted to see if they could direct me towards their mortgage advisors and conveyances. They tried to apply a lot of pressure in this case, even passively implying that by going with their MA and conveyance would as a consequence make things go through quicker.

I'd take what they say with a pinch of salt and confirm with them on the phone that you already have an AIP and are very qualified to make an offer.

moneyistooshorttomention · 10 October 2016 at 12:22PM

When I sold my last house my EA checked the FTB that wanted it had deposit and a mortgage agreed. They duly came back to me and told me exactly how much deposit my buyer had and where it had come from and who the mortgage was arranged with.

Admitted it was an FTB house (2 bedroom terrace) and so the risk of having an inexperienced buyer being rather over-optimistic was higher.

Knowing that that was all "present and correct" did incline me towards that buyer rather than the one that was conducting a bidding war with them (ie a BTL investor).

I suspect my EA was biased towards my accepting a home-owner, rather than an investor, too and hence keener on getting this info. from them.

Small_Yeti · 10 October 2016 at 1:54PM

We had the same thing. I didn't really want to provide the information because, like you, we had a chunk of a deposit and I worried they would use this information to push our offer up. But to be fair they just wanted to check we had the finances in order. As soon as we provided the proof our offer was accepted. It's not pleasant but I understand it means they are not accepting offers from people who might not be able to cover the purchase.

Good luck with your offer.

Marvel1 · 10 October 2016 at 2:05PM

eddddy wrote: »

But I can also see that if the EA calls the vendor and says

"Muffle123 has offered £X, they're a FTB, we've seen evidence of their deposit, and we've seen their AIP - so they look like really strong proceedable buyers"

Part of me sees
"Muffle123 has offered £X, they're a FTB, we've seen evidence of their deposit, and we've seen their AIP - they can afford more if you wish for them to increase their offer"

kilby_007 · 10 October 2016 at 2:13PM

If you want to complete the sale quickly and get the EA on board I find that sending a copy of this information along with your offer does help. If the house has been on the market for a while it's not so important but if you want your offer to be accepted and there's a lot of interest it helps to be forthcoming. Having said that, I did that this morning and we're still waiting to hear back...

eddddy · 10 October 2016 at 2:23PM

cjdavies wrote: »

Part of me sees
"Muffle123 has offered £X, they're a FTB, we've seen evidence of their deposit, and we've seen their AIP - they can afford more if you wish for them to increase their offer"

I'm not convinced.

The EA just wants the property sold. The result of the above strategy might be that the EA has to spend an extra 2 days 'haggling' backwards and forwards - in order to get an extra £5k out of the buyer.

So the EA earns his firm an extra £75 for 2 days work - that's not very cost efficient. (Or even worse the buyer gets the hump during the haggling and walks away.)

The EA would probably prefer the vendor accepted the first offer, so that the EA could then concentrate on selling other properties.

Retrievermomma31 · 10 October 2016 at 3:42PM

This is completely normal -if you were a seller wouldn't you want to have solid proof that the buyer about to make an offer on your house had the sufficient funds and had an AIP?
Unfortunately you can't just take someones word for it.

Brightspark87 · 10 October 2016 at 3:43PM

we were asked for this as the seller didn't like us - nothing to do with agents. We provided and she said our 20% wasn't sufficient deposit.

She ended up accepting an offer of nearly £20k less than ours 6 months down the line.

The agent was embarrassed on her behalf.

thegirlintheattic · 10 October 2016 at 6:32PM

I wouldn't show an AIP. When we offered we said we had an AIP and a preferred solicitor. That was enough for the EA. THey wouldn't take it off the market after the offer was accepted until they had seen the full AIP which was fine.

It's none of the EAs business about the deposit.

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Estate agent requesting Proof of deposit/ mortgage agreement before offer accepted

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