AIBU to walk away from this house purchase?

[Quandaries]

Will try to keep this short.

Viewed a house and loved it 6 weeks ago. Ticked all the right boxes and was very good value for what it was. Offered asking price and it was accepted. Survey done, solicitor engaged etc so at the stage where it’s cost us some money.
Booking deposit has been paid but is refundable (not in Scotland).

We have a large deposit and mortgage is ready to draw down. We’re not in a chain.

Our solicitor was chasing theirs for contracts.

On Thursday I got a call from their agent to say they’ve allowed another viewing from a very insistent couple who are cash buyers and offered £8k more.

Agent now wants us to reoffer and increase on the new buyers’ offer so we’ll be paying £12k above what was agreed. He insists that the house will go for even more if it goes back on the market and says that houses are being snapped up before they go on the market as more people are working from home and this village is very popular for those with just an occasional commute.

I’ve had a look at Right Move and can’t see any evidence of anything other than price drops in the area. I accept that there may be houses selling before hitting the market and I don’t have this data.

My heart loves the house. It’s in a stunning village and really ticks all the boxes in terms of schools etc.

My head is saying we’re actually in a better position than the cash buyer as we’re 100% ready to go and can sign this week whereas they will need to have survey done etc.

Head is also telling me that if the sellers are going to screw us for £8k (for context, that’s a bit over 1% of the purchase price we had agreed), they’ll be a nightmare to deal with and it’s only a matter of time until they come back to us either with a new offer from the other bidders, or pushing to put it back on the market.

I’m also guessing that house purchases slow down a bit in winter, and it’s an area where more Covid lockdown measures are likely so putting it back on the market may mean there aren’t many viewings.

For additional context, we can afford to increase our offer. I’m just loathe to get into a bidding war due to how the vendor has sprung this on us.

But I love the house.

YABU- up my offer
YANBU- walk away

If you will still own the house you live in then why not wait a while and buy a doer-upper/auction property in the village and do it up to your taste before you move in?

Once the stamp duty holiday (which is driving the mini-boom), ends then prices will probably fall as the economy will be more fucked by then.

Whether it’s the sellers being greedy, or the estate agent reverting to “boom-type” dodgy behaviour - who knows?

I would offer to meet them half way. People are saying walk away...but your happy with the house and you’ve paid for all the searches etc.

Did we ever find out WTAF a "booking deposit" is?

I, like the other poster who asked, have never heard of such a thing.

Tell them to forget it
They have no integrity

The seller is not greedy any more than you are greedy wanting a house "for cheap" yes they are. They had accepted the OP’s offer, then they decided to allow viewings regardless of the fact the house should have been considered sold STC. So then going back and demanding more money is pure greed.

OP, were you aware the house was not taken off the market after your offer was accepted?

Personally I wouldn’t worry about these people at the school gates. IMO there is no cash buyer and they’re taking the piss. I would call their bluff and say that now you’ve decided to pull out, I guarantee that if you up the price now they’ll be back in a couple of weeks demanding more money, the agent has set up the scenario already in fact by saying the house will sell for so much more.

If the house had been taken off the market then how did this cash buyer know of its existence, and why did the sellers agree to a viewing.

Nope, there isn’t a cash buyer, and even if there is the sellers are immoral and this will only be the start of issues with them.

I wouldn’t up my offer on principle.

Walk away. In the event that they are bullshitting you and come back offering it to you for the original amount, tell them your offer is withdrawn and you are now prepared to pay £8000 less than before.

I would book a whole bunch of other viewings with the estate agent and tell them you will think about it.

Will add credibility to the point that you are preparing to walk away.

It's a bluff, call it.

Then when they come back to you offer 5k less for them fucking you around.

Perhaps match the increased offer in the basis that that's the end of it and the house comes off the market immediately.

If the house had been taken off the market then how did this cash buyer know of its existence, and why did the sellers agree to a viewing.

I’m sorry, but this is very naive. Houses stay on Rightmove etc. for days or weeks after a sale is agreed as SSTC. Even if the messaging is changed to ‘no longer on the market’, if someone has saved a property’s details, what’s to stop them following it up? From the OP’s first post, it sounds like the other interested party contacted the sellers directly - perfectly feasible given this is a sought-after village. It’s not like it would be difficult to find the house.

Posters trying to convince the OP that the cash buyer doesn’t exist and is an invention to push the price up are doing her no favours. Even if a vendor could persuade an agent to be complicit in this, why would they do this after accepting an offer? The time to invent another interested party would have been when the OP was making her offer.

Estate agents typically make between 1 and 1.5% commission on a sale. An extra £12k on the price is at most an extra £180 in commission for the agent. Estate agents dealing in £800k houses just don’t risk losing a sale for the sake of that amount. Think about it - would you take a guaranteed £8 - 12k in commission, or gamble it for less than two hundred quid?

It seems that buyer has had an unexpected increase connected with their purchase and they’re trying to shift it onto you.

We had this when we bought our house. We'd offered the asking price and had it accepted, but they seemed to take our being reasonable as evidence that we were stupid and told us that there 'had been a mistake' in the price and it was supposed to be £6K more (odd how they hadn't noticed this 'mistake' when they 'mistakenly' accepted our offer). After we had no truck with that, they discovered that the house they were buying was supposedly going to cost them more - whether their seller was as cheeky as them, work would need to be done, they hadn't accounted for stamp duty - I don't know.

They genuinely couldn't understand why it wasn't simply reasonable to tell us we needed to pay them the extra, since, if we didn't, it would mean they lost out financially....

Is the booking deposit not something to do with the mortgage? I’m sure I had to pay something (£250 springs to mind) to get the mortgage offer concluded, presumably to ‘book’ our £100k or whatever out of the ‘pot’ they’d allocated for that particular product.

@Hingeandbracket not sure if the same, but I had to pay a deposit to the estate agent of £200 in the name of 'protection', which would then be returned once we had exchanged. It was to stop me messing the sellers about, which was ironic considering we were actually gazumped on that house (we told them to poke it and found a better house)

The fact they were still showing people around despite accepting your offer shows what kind of people you’re dealing with.

I don't have much advice but find this thread fascinating as I plan to buy a house for the first time next year (but in a different country).

I guess if I were you - on top of everything else - I would also ask myself, if I pay the extra 8k, how mad will I get everytime I discover, in the following years, hidden issues with this house I ended up buying for 8k more?

Reading this thread all I can say is, thank God for the Scottish system of marketing, surveying, valuing , buying and selling property.

Smacks of EA bullshit to me.
Say we are ready to sign at £x today, we cannot go to £x+12K.
And walk away.

Posters trying to convince the OP that the cash buyer doesn’t exist and is an invention to push the price up are doing her no favours. Even if a vendor could persuade an agent to be complicit in this, why would they do this after accepting an offer? The time to invent another interested party would have been when the OP was making her offer.

No, not really. At the point of making an offer, the buyer doesn't yet have as much emotional attachment to the property. The time to do it is exactly as has happened to the OP - when you believe that the house is yours, and you're close enough to completion to have started really investing in and getting excited about what it's going to be like to live there and looking forward to your new home. In your mind it's already your home, and psychologically we find it (understandably) much harder to give up something we already have than to go without something we never did.

That was shitty of the seller and the estate agents OP, I'm sorry you're in this position. We were in the same position a couple of months ago - fell in love with a house, made a good offer on it which was accepted only to hear two weeks later that they agents and vendor had allowed more viewings to go ahead and a cash buyer had matched our offer so they were going with them instead (thankfully this was before we'd arranged a survey). I was then surprised a couple of weeks ago to get a call from the agent saying the cash buyer had pulled out so did we still want the house before it went back on the market. I asked for 24 hours to think about it and they said they'd wait until the following week (in 3 days time) and I agreed to contact them the next morning to confirm. To my total non-surprise the house then magically appeared back on the market just 2 hours later so we decided at that point to walk away. If people play silly games as your vendors have done you wouldn't be able to trust that they'd commit to you right up until exchanging.

Not much of an update but, based on discussion with the EA, I’m fairly confident that there is another bidder.

Had a good chat and the EA insists that he advised the new bidder (will call them NB) that the sale was agreed when they inquired but NB contacted the vendor directly and the vendor insisted on a viewing.

EA has been very insistent that they advised the vendor against opening up new offers.
EA was also quite upfront with me in that the commission they’re guaranteed with my sale is worth more to them than a few pounds extra on a new offer which isn’t as far along as we are.

I spoke to my solicitor and she’s confirmed what I already knew- vendor can do this and I have no comeback. She also pointed out that it’s very much a sellers’ market where we are.

I’m speaking to EA again in the morning.

I think I’ll offer the £8k to meet the other bid, conditional on contracts being with my solicitor within 24hrs.

DH, on the other hand, wants to make them a killer offer to really get them excited and then walk away entirely on the day we’re going to sign.
He’s bitter

DH, on the other hand, wants to make them a killer offer to really get them excited and then walk away entirely on the day we’re going to sign.
He’s bitter

I like his style. I'd do the same

^But I'd make sure I dragged it out for a good 3 months as well.

Go on the DH.
I would do that too.

I like your husband's style!!
It sounds like your EA wasn't being dodgy on this one but the vendor. The sooner you're exchanged, the better!

@LiveFromHome

^But I'd make sure I dragged it out for a good 3 months as well.

Dragging out was probably part of his evil plan 😈

I was quite impressed. He’s usually the level-headed one, and I’m the emotionally attached one.