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.

I think you summed it up at the beginning. Your estate agent is crap and really sounds like they are not working in your best interests at all.
I suggest being present when the estate agent communicates with the other buyer. You’ll see their true colours. £20,000 is a lot to give away on impulse.
It’s money. It’s business. But with the estate agent it’s personal. I would blow them off and start again with somebody reputable who has you in their best interests. Good luck.

Don't drop a penny, put a time limit on it or it goes back up to asking or 5k higher than asking. He will lose all the fees, survey etc if it falls through. You lose nothing but a little time remarketing it

It depends how much % of the value 20k is.
we had to drop by that much BUT we had lost 5 buyers by that point and lost 4 houses we were going to buy. Which costs us £££ in lawyers surveys etc.
If in a position to wait. I would wait.

In the last week of a probate sale our buyers also dropped the price by £20k.
We said no and immediately took the property off the market.
Despite this the buyers upped their offer by £2k. Which we ignored
We put some decking in the garden and sorted th3 whole space out and put it back up for sale for £20k more than our previous asking price. ( prices had shot up in the 5 months since we first marketed it and the decking and garden redo transformed the it ) .
The previous buyers saw the property again and offered £2000 under our new asking.
We turned it down and refused them any other viewings by them as they clearly intended to play the same game all over again.
We got the asking within weeks.

If you are aware of what other properties are like and you know yours is not overpriced don’t let anyone play games, particularly at the last minute.

nTell them to do one. We had a similar issue last year, hadn’t got as far as yours, but they made an offer, which we had accepted. Three weeks on, they wanted to view again (I didn’t have an issue with that), but then said it was with a view to a lower offer. We said absolutely not, and told the estate agent we weren’t selling to them. We lost £3k taking a lower offer, but I’m not being messed around by anyone.

How can you know there will be no problem at the original price? The market has been dropping, it might have been optimistically priced to start off with. Presumably no one was offering the full price originally or why would the OP have accepted the offer. Unless you know the property you don't actually know that so it isn't good advice.

The market has changed in the last year.

Depends where. It hasn’t changed in Lancashire, demand is outstripping supply.

I wouldn’t budge , remarket asap

I work in conveyancing and in all honesty, we would tell you in this situation not to even bother with any negotiations. If they wanted the other flat, they should have bought that one, not come in with an idea to haggle you down after contracts had been issued. It's a dirty tactic, one to put you in a disadvantaged position so close to the finishing line, adding extra pressure on you to just say "ok" to get it through. £20k, irrelevant of amounts paid for purchase or OP's own financial circumstances is a LOT of money to drop by, to match another property, especially one being sold with furnishings.

Hold fast, withdraw the £10k offer and give them a definitive time scale in which to response. I would say no more than 24 hours. If the EA is applying pressure, let the conveyancers deal with them (if you have any instructed for your probate sale), as EA are only interested in the commission, not your interests as a seller.

This, or say price will rise!

Well lets hope the OP is in Lancashire then because for many areas the market has definitely changed and prices are falling.

This is a prime example of why several of us have been advising the OP to study the market where she is and particularly the market for retirement properties. If she isn't in Lancashire then what's happening in Lancashire isn't at all relevant.

This is common in and around London, personally I'd call his bluff. You might even get a higher offer elsewhere

They are only meant to mark it as SSTC not remove it from Rightmove until completed. You are the client not the buyer. Tell the agent to relist it or go elsewhere

I agree.

That's a despicable comment @Mummysalwaysright. Begrudging and downright nasty.

I would be inclined to now withdraw the £10k but I am incredibly petty. I definitely would not go any lower though.

Prices reducing now and flats are particularly hard hit. Market is readjusting. Not a nice thing to do though but you haven’t technically lost because you didn’t buy it.

I wouldn’t drop anything, hang fire. Buyer is trying it on.

This is not what is happening here.

Where I live, some flats have been on the market for close to a year. That includes a price reduction sometime last year, but still not sold. However, that is just where I live and I can only comment on flats (not houses).

While acknowledging that your buyer is looking more and more like a timewaster, I also think this could still fall well within the territory of cock-up rather than conspiracy.

It may be, for example, that the buyer hasn't not paid over his monies, so much as that they haven't yet cleared the anti-money laundering checks. I realise that also sounds bad, but solicitors commonly tell buyers that they have to show the provenance of the monies, but forget to tell them to provide 6 months' worth of bank statements, say. Or the monies may have been transferred in from a foreign bank and no one made it clear to the vendor that that would flag up a need for enhanced checks.

We all like to hate on estate agents (deservedly, for the most part, and OP's certainly seems pretty crap) but there's also a fucktonne of poor conveyancing practice out there. I would not automatically assume that the monies not being there is yet more evidence that the buyer is a chancer, and I hope the transaction can still go through for you next week, @Mustnotbeleftblank .

I would not drop. They're trying their luck.

OP I believe that you can give your EA written instructions to not pass on offers from a particular buyer .. I’ve done it when I had an obvious fantasist offering on a probate sale

Give him a week to exchange or put it back on the market and hold out for a better price. If he wants to start again with fees on a new property so be it. As you aren’t depending on this sale to move he can go fuck himself. Or tell him he can now only buy it at the original asking price.

Hold firm! He does the deal you’ve offered and completes, or you walk away. I wouldn’t have even offered the 10k sweetener, but I don’t know your personal circumstances.