To tell gazunderer to do one?

[Mustnotbeleftblank]

Selling a probate property, due to exchange and complete today. Agreed price was £20k less than asking/previous purchase price and included all furniture. Ours was the show home apartment, and another was put on the market which is empty, much smaller and in a less favourable, dark and dingy aspect at £20k lower than our agreed price 🙄 this flat is with an EA who persistently undervalues these properties which is why I did not use them.

Received a call from our Estate Agents yesterday. Buyer still wants our apartment but now wants to pay the same as the cheaper, crappier one or he'll withdraw and buy the other apartment. I am properly pissed, but offer £10k off to get it past the line.

Buyer is firm, £20k less or he'll walk.

I think the buyer is trying their luck, the other property was marketed in March. I've seen the buyer at the building whilst clearing out the property, I know they've been to look at the other flat long before this week and I suspected that he would try something like this at the last minute. I am also confident it's our flat he wants, just at the crap flat's price.

I've made them wait for my response, and having slept on it I am of the mind to hold firm on the £10k drop, requiring immediate exchange to stop him dicking about, or deal's off. If he walks, I will still have the property to remarket as well as all the furniture the buyer wanted included in the sale which will cover fees to date, and he'll have taken the competing property off the market.

AIBU to not reduce further and wish them luck with the other property if they withdraw, or do I suck up losing £20k?

Selling a property in England sucks.

Accepting £20K less than the asking price is better than having to accept £25K less than the asking price

but as above it's not £20k it would be £40k under - so I'd risk getting "25k under next time!

Stay strong on this one. Agreed price or he can fuck off and buy the less desirable one.

I think I posted on that thread.

Glad it worked out, but god it’s annoying.

I was also gazundered in a sharply falling market and wouldn’t have got the agreed price if we put it back on the market so met the gazunderer half way.

... aside from the management charges I thought the reason retirement flats were cheaper was due to the age restrictions

I believe that can have an effect, but with a rapidly aging population - not to mention the cost of retirement homes as an alternative - I wouldn't expect it to be a major issue

Presumably OP's looked into how readily local retirement properties are selling at various price points (?) and either it's a reasonable price or it's not ... and if it's the former I'd be telling him where to insert his offer

It’s actually 40k off the asking price. She’d already reduced it by 20k and they’d agreed. Now the other flat is on the market he wants another 20k off or he’ll buy the other flat. I’d tell him what to do with his offer and put it back on the market.

They pay the agreed price or it stays on the market would be my approach .

So he wants 40k under the original price? Unless you desperately need the money I'd put it back on at the original price with a different EA. Surely 40k is worth a few more months?

Just had a look for retirement flats in the town we want to move to. Four have been on since 2021, This is a town with a population of around 80,000 so not huge. Plenty more have been on since 2022 but I gave up counting. If I was selling in that town I wouldn't be too gung ho about losing a buyer, in other towns it might be different but those 4 flats have had to have management fees paid and council tax. It will be several thousand pounds by now.

Hold firm OP! Sounds like he would be getting a bargain without even the £10K drop so I would hold firm at the agreed price (no £10K, no £20k drop) and he can take it or leave it, if doesn't take it by x time today deal off, end of.

I think I'd be inclined to instruct my EA that the price goes UP from the original agreed price by £1000 for every hour that elapses between 1pm and completion or close of business today, whichever happens first.

Negotiating is what you do until you’ve agreed the price. To my mind the ‘deal’ was done and dusted, then he came back on exchange day and demanded another reduction or he’d buy the other flat. That isn’t negotiating, it’s CFery. And I think the other EA needed to know that the flat they are selling is being used as a bargaining chip to get the other property. Two sellers are being dangled by the buyer - one is going to be disappointed by the end of the day. I think it’ high time a similar system to what they have in Scotland is introduced here, to stop this kind of thing. Once you make the offer and it’s accepted, it’s a done deal.

Yeah actually I would go back to the original asking price, not the initial 20k lower you previously agreed. Sounds like it's worth that and he's just trying it on, I'd be sit for a buyer who's not going to mess you around like this.

He either pays the agreed price or off he fucks. OP, I think you said this was a probate sale? If so, you can afford to stare him down.

Is there a rule that estates have to be disbursed within a certain timeframe or can you just take however long you need to get the price you want?

Just looked at the details for one of the flats that has been on the market since 2021, listed early in the year so empty for over 2 years. The ground rent and management charge is over £2k a year, then there is council tax and then multiply it by 2. They still don't have a buyer and the money is draining away.

@GasPanic this is not “good negotiation “, OP has already done this and the deal has been done!
This is an 11th hour sneaky attempt to back OP into a corner and accept a lower price !

How much do you care about anyone else to give them 20k of your money when you think don't have to ?

To me he gives off signs that he is an investor who wants the best return on his money and is willing to behave aggressively.

If you don't like this sort of person, probably not a good idea to accept an offer from an investor in the first place. Your agent should be able to provide the buyers background at the point of offer.

It's all very well saying not to accept an offer from an investor, but he outright lied in the first place, by claiming that he was buying it for his mum (presumably not on commercial terms) when he clearly is an investor - and a deceitful one at that. Investor or not, I wouldn't want to try to deal with a shameless liar; but unfortunately, it tends to go with the territory that dishonest liars don't tell you that they are dishonest liars upfront.

He isn't 'giving OP £20K of his money' - he's buying a property at an agreed price. I don't 'give' Asda loads of my money each year - I get food and goods in exchange for it all, all at agreed prices. Nobody forced him to agree to the price that he offered, or indeed to buy the property at all.

I completely understand hard-nosed business, and there's nothing wrong at all with negotiating furiously to get yourself the very best price that you can - but you do this before you make the deal and not once you've shaken hands on your agreement. The former is business; the latter is dishonesty.

It does rather depend on the flat, location, condition etc though. Just like other properties. There are a couple of retirement complexes near me where the flats always sell within a few weeks. I am sure there are others in the same town that would stick on the market.

Is it back on RightMove yet?

Ooh, let's hope that he has an auto-alert set up - and the first he discovers is when he's alerted to a new property in his target area, which turns out to be the exact one that he'd already agreed to buy but has reneged on the deal he struck for it, hence it's now back on the open market!

Given that the EA took the flat off Rightmove at the CF's request and is passing on ridiculously low offers at the last minute, I suspect that either the EA and the CF are friends, or the CF is offering the EA a backhander.

Check the contract with your agent, if you switched agents would you be liable for 2 sets of fees etc?

If you are happy with your agent (doesn’t sound you are to be honest), then tell them Mr Guzunderer has until 5 pm to stick with the original agreed sale price or the sale is off and if they don’t hear from him today for the flat to be resisted asap.

If you are unhappy with agents and you won’t suffer financially then look for new agents.

If it’s a retirement property, then even if he is buying it as an investor, he can only put in tenants who meet the criteria (so over 55/or over 60 etc), it makes it a very unattractive investment with higher risks of voids than other properties. Far more likely he really is buying it for his mum, but is acting like he’s buying a normal investment property.

the problem comes if his mum is after a flat in this block for any particular reason (location, the services offered to residents etc) so it this flat or the dark cramped one.

yea to getting it back in rightmove today, hopefully you’ll get some interest.

Glad you put "deal" in inverted commas because no "deal" is reached until the point of exchange.

Everything up to that point is an offer subject to ... survey, banks, me not being made redundant, meteorite hitting the world, market not collapsing, not finding out the neighbours are assholes. The list goes on. And on.

Your mind says the "deal" was done and dusted. Someone elses mind says it wasn't. This is why we have contracts and things aren't "done and dusted" just because one person thinks they are.

If he is an investor, as we suspect, and he tries this on a lot, he will certainly get a name for himself and find it harder to buy property in the first place.

We were selling a house a couple of years ago (also a probate property, as it happens), and the EA passed on the offers that they'd received, as normal. The head EA called and spoke to me off the record and told me that it was entirely up to us as vendors, but the person who had made the 'best' offer was very well-known to them as always coming in with the highest offer to get his foot in the door and then always trying tricks like this. Moreover, he would tell them a story about his circumstances and intentions that later turned out not to be remotely true. He'd also previously tried to bribe the EA and was rather aggressive, incidentally.

I'm sure this man thought himself very clever indeed, and it probably did work with less astute EAs and buyers who were fooled by him; but as far as we were concerned, we would never consider him to buy our house - and I'm sure, once his reputation spread, a lot of other vendors of houses that he wanted similarly refused to consider him.

Just sometimes, acting honestly and with integrity - which absolutely can include hard negotiation for a great price before striking the deal - can open a lot more doors to you.

Everything up to that point is an offer subject to ... survey, banks, me not being made redundant, meteorite hitting the world, market not collapsing, not finding out the neighbours are assholes. The list goes on. And on.

Come on, of course anything can happen or arise before the point of exchange, but this kind of shameless behaviour is pure bad faith: planned all along when making the original offer deceitfully.

His only 'reason' was that there was a less desirable flat on the market for a lower price - and it had been ever since he made the original offer for OP's flat.