WWYD if you'd sold your house and then someone offered you a lot more money?

[sweetheart]

Dh and I accepted an offer on our house last week, today someone else has put in a considerably higher offer. Morally I feel wrong accepting the higher offer but the house dh and I are moving to needs a lot of work doing to it and then extra money we've been offered would pay for a new kitchen.

It sounds to me like the EA hasn't done his/her job properly by not chasing up all the people who viewed. If he/she had then you wouldn't have been placed in this difficult position. We get calls back on most houses we view to find out what we want to do

Thanks oddfodd, "exchanged contracts" what stage is that? The hour before keys are due to be handed over?

Sounds awful and a situation where you are always uncertain where life will take you.

You generally exchange contracts about 4 weeks before you hand the keys over (can be more or less).

Ah you see, that's the thing. You can exchange contracts weeks and weeks before you actually complete the deal - or you can do it within the hour. Generally there's a bit of time between the two because until you exchange, you can't actually be sure that you're going to buy/sell so you need a bit of time to get your stuff packed and out of the building.

It's basically a hideously stressful process and, having been horribly dicked about by sellers on a number of occasions, I've decided that the only way I'm leaving this house is in a box. :o

So people put a bid in for a house, then find out that it was over valued and can't get a mortgage (but pay for survey) Or they can afford to buy said place, pay for survey - whilst others in the same situation are doing the same for the same house.

Dreadful, no wonder you are not planning another move!

You don't have two buyers paying for surveys as a rule. Just the one with offer accepted.

We have recently sold- our original buyers couldn't get the mortgage they applied for after eight weeks, surveys etc. Market had gone up in the meantime and we marketed again and got more for the house. Interestingly I was agonising over it and posted on here and got a unanimous 'go for new higher offer'! But then we didn't know if the buyers would get any other mortgage, and we needed to sell quickly.

It's one at a time Silver - so people wouldn't commission a survey unless they had an offer accepted.

The issue is that it all operates on a 'gentlemens' agreement system and if you're buying or selling your house from someone who doesn't play by the rules as this thread shows, it all goes tits up.

Price match or second offer (and thus potential buyer) wins.

I just think you should ask yourselves why someone would pay £25k over the asking price when there is only one other offer on the table? If several parties were interested, I could understand it, but if only one other offer is on the table, why £25k. Seems a bit fishy to me. I think the people who are saying they will drop their offer at a later date when it really is too late to back out May we'll be right. You'll do what you want, but I think if you go with the higher offer, you should at least go back to the first party that offered and give them the chance to up their offer.

I don't believe in karma, but I do believe in "what goes around comes around" . Think very hard before you accept this possibly unrealistic offer.

IMHO, if one doesn't have any ethics, one can't complain about being the victim of someone else without ethics. Honour and one's word should be important and should be something we teach our children by example.

The OP didn't mention any figures. She just said that the higher offer was a 'considerably higher offer'
I mentioned the figure of £25k to illustrate a point. It was a random figure.

Yes just to clarify I did not ever mention a figure of £25k and that is not the correct figure. In any case we have formally accepted an offer and memorandums of agreements have now been drawn up (which they had not before) It is not the highest offer (see we're not ALL about the cash!) but it's not the lowest offer either.

It seems the market has moved since our chain collapsed. We had a lot of interest in the remarketing of our house and as such we received a couple of offers over the asking price.

Anyway, it's hopefully all done now - if things change then so be it. What is meant to be will be and if it's not this I'm ok with that.

of course the "buyers" have stated they don't want to get into a bidding war, what buyer does? their feelings aren't however the most important thing here. I'm saying the same thing on this thread as on the one by the lady who thinks she has to withdraw from a sale after 9 weeks because her purchase has fallen through (and on which the massed angry hoardes are being ludicrously unbalanced and horrible to her about it):
this is the most important financial transaction you're likely to make. It has long lasting ramifications. Your own position and that of your family is more important than the feelings of a stranger who could quite easily turn around and gazunder you on exchange day, or indeed pull out in three weeks because they've found something nicer.
it's the way the system works, and they've not incurred costs yet anyway. If they don't want to get into a bidding war, then simply accept the higher offer, assuming the buyer seems kosher (how did they come to make an offer while the property was off the market? does the estate agent have a hazy concept of what that means or is it a different agent? would you therefore have liability to the other agent?)