To feel p***** off that we've found our dream home... But the vendor isn't accepting any offers even at the listing price.

[mummabubs]

DH and I have been house hunting for a little while. We found a property last week that's been on the market for 10 months unsold but ticked all our boxes so we figured we'd see it for ourselves. It's on the market for £425,000 (reduced in November from £450,000). I even took annual leave this afternoon so that we could view it without our toddler with us. Spent a lot of time researching the area, commute into work, cost of living etc.

When we got to the viewing this afternoon the seller was still at home, which we found a little unsettling but fair enough. House ticked all our boxes, for once the photos from the agent really did do the place justice. Perfect family home for us and we found it impossible when looking round not to imagine our son growing up there.

At the end of the viewing we were in the garage and seller was in the house so I asked the agent why in their opinion the house has been on the market for so long and not sold given that there doesn't appear to be anything amiss with the property.They explained that the seller is firmly resolved that they want £450,000+ for it so are simply rejecting every offer made. It's listed with another agent and they've independently confirmed the same is happening with them. Turns out the seller is also playing the agents off against each other by fabricating offers from each side. DH and I could afford the asking price (just) but the seller's goal is just way out of our price range. We still plan to make an offer tomorrow but we know it will be rejected, it's more just an exercise in closure for us as we really love the house.

Just feeling pissed off and deflated that not only have I wasted precious annual leave to go today but also fallen for a property that if it had been listed for what the guy truly wants we'd never have viewed in the first place. It's quite a unique property as it was bespokely built by the family who live there so not exactly easy to find an equivalent.

The games this guy is playing so far make me wonder that even if he did accept an offer from us (blatantly won't) he doesn't even seem that trustworthy to stick it out to completion.

AIBU to think that you should at least list your house for a price you want so as not to waste potential buyers time!?

Welcome to the housing crisis where people can sell for what they like, it will sit empty for months and months as the sellers have no reason to sell and will wait and wait for a deluded price which they will never get, times like these we need a mild recession to sort it out and hopefully force them to sell for a reasonable market value price.

Walk away. If they won't make a deal you can live with, no point pursuing it any further.

My sister had this. The EA out the house up for 30k less than they wanted and expected a bidding war. This didn't happen so it paid off for my sister in the end as the seller wanted a quick sale so dipped out.

People can try to sell for what they like

Equally if there was a recession they might decide they don’t want to sell.

Wishing for a recession isn’t suddenly going to make people sell if they presumably have no mortgage and can afford to stay.

There are indeed a lot of people out there who will cling on to any sniff of a house valuation and consider that the absolute minimum that their house is worth for all time.

It might have been a very favourable market some years ago and one unrealistic/over-optimistic agent massively overpriced it in the hope of getting the vendor to go with them. Four other agents gave an identical lower value, but this one upped it by £50K; but that is the bare minimum the similarly-unrealistic vendor believes their house is worth.

Of course, it will be guaranteed to increase massively with the constantly rising market, but it will never be worth a penny less than that....

Before you said you're in Wales I was convinced I knew the exact house... lol

Re reading has just reminded me of my sisters NDN. He (a builder) did loads of work on their house, it is lovely and has increased the value, but its not worth what she has decided she wants to sell it for in order to buy a new build on the estate around the corner (twice what sis and bil paid for their identical house). IMO the estate houses are nice but waaaay over priced and not as nice as the house they are in now.

She was moaning to my sister that it took 6 EA before one would list at the price she needed it to sell at, and they had had no viewings in three months. Husband said to BIL that he knew that they would never sell at that price, so he was happy for her to list it as he was happy where they were. Its now off the market :o

@ThumbWitchesAbroad as mad as it sounds it's surprisingly not that uncommon for people to exchange and complete on the same day. We did too actually. The exchange couldn't have happened any sooner but because we were in a rush to move in and in a position to do so immediately then that's what happened!

OP, walk away. We had a similar thing happen with the first house we tried to put an offer on. The owners didn't want to sell unless it was for 'an offer they couldn't refuse'...which was more than a third more than it was worth. Crackers.

I would walk away now before you invest too much emotionally and worse still financially. They could have opted for a sealed bids sale with offers over x,y,z but haven’t. They will play silly buggers to the end and you will never be sure until completion day if the house will be yours. Once you invest more emotionally you will feel like you have to invest more financially in whichever way they end up asking for the money.

Property laws in the U.K. need to change so that sellers and buyers are equally tied in from the beginning. Surveyors and solicitors get rich off people pulling out after surveys are completed and no one has any assurance the sale will go through until it actually does. Even the 10% deposit at exchange is utter nonsense- if a commitment to pay rather than hard cash is accepted and the buyer pulls out the seller would have to drag the buyer through the courts to ever see that money.

We exchanged on Wednesday and completed on Friday, after months of the solicitors dragging it out!

My friends mother pulled out on completion day. They were there to sign the final paper work and hand over the keys and she said that she didnt want to sell and never had.

Slightly different in that her husband was a violent bully and she had never been brave enough to say anything before that, but it happens. And this was about 30 years ago and I dont think that the buyers got any of their costs back.

It depends how much you love the house and then what you can stretch to. If it is the one, stretch as far as you possibly can.

Where I live offers can exceed the asking price by a huge amount. Last purchase, first house we offered 100k over but no luck, next house 150k over, no luck, so when we knew it was the one we went in at 250k above asking price. They still dicked about and played us off with two other buyers. Ended up throwing another 38k at it, but we won in the end. And are very, very happy in our lovely home.

I would make no decisions based on the say-so of one EA.
First put in your offer, a bit above asking if you can afford it, together with a nice card saying how you loved the house and their stories about the house had made it a home for you and your DC and so on.
If that's rejected, run, don't walk away.
But don't believe the EA and walk away before you've tried.

I agree with all those saying not to trust the EAs, it happened to me.

I put in an offer on my current house and was told it was turned down so asked the EA what they were looking for and they just went silent on me. When the house was still on the market weeks later I contacted the seller direct and, surprise, they had never even been given my offer so we negotiated direct. Never found out why the EA did that.

If you’re going to write them a letter don’t trust the EA to pass it on!

People are weird. I offered £500k against asking price of £500k and the EA replied “vendor is looking for closer to £600k”. I was pissed off they’d wasted my time with viewings yes.

Some people think that because certain behaviour isn’t illegal, it must be ok.

Maybe with future viewings ask EA what price they are looking for before you view, to avoid mad people wasting time.

Also can’t trust EA unfortunately 😕

Well it sounds like he's no chance of selling until someone with more money than sense comes along.

We had this years ago. Looked at a house that had been renovated to a standard that was too high for the price point and obviously they wanted their money back.

Was on for £135k at a time where you paid £0 stamp duty on houses up to £125k and then 1% on the whole amount above that, so no houses at all sold for £125-£130k unless there was under the table dealings on white goods etc.

However ceiling price for area was £115-£120k at most. But it was a really nice house, and easily affordable to us, so we offered £125k which was unsurprisingly rejected.

According to Zoopla, the house sold a year later for, drum roll, £125k, which they could have had from us and moved on a year faster/saved/earned the interest on the money.

Some sellers are highly unrealistic, we experienced this when we bought our first home a couple of years ago. We viewed one without an estate agent at all, the owner showed us around which was just plain weird. He was trying to throw in lots of extras such as ‘I’ll leave this expensive light shade here’ and even offered us his ghastly TV bed . It had been on the market for months and they were desperate to move but just wouldn’t budge on the price whatsoever. It definitely wasn’t worth the amount they wanted, it was too small and not in the most desirable of areas. We drove past it a few months later and it was still on the market.

“He built the house himself”

I can see (as an architect myself) why he would be emotionally attached. Maybe the money thing is his way of stalling (a long shot but a possibility!)

Can you pop a note though his door saying how much you love the house, how it’s your dream home and how you wouldn’t change a single thing? Not the norm but if you’re desperate then worth a try. If I built my own home I wouldn’t want to ever sell it!

When we moved a couple of years ago, the estate agent warned us of the local conditions. Specifically, plenty of people wanting to downsize. Houses sold quickly but didn't complete because they had unreasonable expectations about the price and quality of the "downsize"

Normal for seller to be there. We’ve always shown people around. But the test sounds like a nightmare. Maybe he doesn’t want to sell wife dies or worried what survey will show - if he’s built it and has reputation as a good builder.

We are buying a house at the moment. The vendor wouldn’t drop the sale price for almost a year and refused every offer. Turns out they didn’t want to move. Family were pressuring them to down size. We made an offer and our estate agent played the young family lovey people type angle. She eventually took the offer but it was all in her own time. We didn’t put the pressure on to get her out of the house or close the sale quickly because we get the feeling she wanted time to deal with the loss of her home and moving on

We had this decades ago: found a nice place & offered just under the asking price. EA came back to us & said old lady vendor refused our offer & said she wanted the full asking price.

So we said OK, we'll pay the full asking price. We were happy, thinking we'd got the place.

EA came back slightly mystified & apologetic & said, she's turned that down too - now she wants £xK above the asking price.

At that point we pulled out, deciding she was nuts & it was a waste of time.

It’s normal for the seller to be there but IMO the way they react can make a difference to your viewing experience.

I once went to view a house which had been on the market for almost a year despite others in the area selling fairly quickly. Price was around the same as others in the area so did wonder what the issue was.

The seller insisted on doing all the viewings himself.

When we arrived he complained that we were literally one minute early. Then proceeded to take us into the living room and question us as to why we were looking at other properties and not just his. He then took us around and let his dog out of the back of his car to see us off of his property. The dog’s name was .... asbo. 😂

I didn’t like the house enough to want to buy it anyway, but I think that the seller’s presence and attitude definitely contributed to the fact it had been on the market for so long.

When I rang the agents with feedback I did suggest that perhaps if the agents were conducting the viewings they might get a bit more interest since this felt like an interrogation. They said they’d had similar feedback before but he had refused.

IIRC the house was on the market for at least another two years and then taken off.

We were offering home report price for houses when we were looking but houses in my area go for 10-20% over the home report and the sellers know that so hold out. It's ridiculous. We eventually got a beautiful home at home report price I. The area we want and I'm so glad we never got any of the other houses we offered on because this one is perfect for us.

On the other hand, my NDN house went up for sale just after we'd bought this house. It needed a lot of work, new windows and doors, new bathroom, new kitchen etc. Really needed a full update. It was listed for £40k more than ours (which needed no work) and £40k more than our other neighbour who also needed to do no work.

It was being sold as part of a divorce so we theorised the wife probably didn't want to sell. Imagine our amazement when it sold. Admittedly it took over a year but hoopla tells me it sold for asking price. New owners are currently busy spending a fortune on it. Baffling as for the money they could have had several, beautiful properties just up the road that needed no work at all.