To withdraw offer?

[Gill123789]

Viewed a house on Monday and put an offer in on Tuesday, I live in Scotland - so we’ve offered 2k under Home Report. The house is an ex-rental and needs a lot of work, it’s a 4 bed detached.

I called the estate agent on Wednesday to see if there was any feedback on our offer - I was told that sellers were hoping for a 1st time buyer to avoid ended up in a chain - we have a house we’d need to sell. I agreed to sit tight until the end of the week as they wanted to allow other viewing to take place before making a decision, it was hoped we’d have an answer by Saturday.

I chased the estate agent on Saturday, to basically be told the same sort of scenario. Estate agent did confirm that as of Saturday we were the only offer. Now the house is a 4 bed detached so estate agent did tell me that they’d tried to explain to the seller that it might not be the type of house a 1st time buyer would go for. I’m expecting to hear back from the estate agent tomorrow.

I am anticipating that they might try and ask us to hold out for a bit longer, I feel like our offer is likely being used to try and sell the home to others. AIBU to tell them if we don’t have a decision by Tuesday (1 week after initially offering) we are withdrawing the offer?

You're making this process really difficult on yourself with your house not being on the market

You need to get your place on the market and pray you can negotiate dates between your buyers and sellers.
We're in Scotland and took a chance on something that popped up before we'd even thought about putting ours on the market. We were very, very lucky our sellers had a long wait for their new build completion date but it was a mad dash to get our place ready as part of our deal was a verbal promise to get it on the market within the month.

Yes, we ARE in 2023, not 2021. The market has dampened significantly. We accepted an offer at 20% over the home report price in 2021. By contrast, it sounds like the sellers here are going to get nothing like that, as is standard in Central Scotland at the moment, much closer to the home report price. If there's no sign of it going to a closing date the potential buyer is in a strong position. I've been buying and selling property in Scotland for 30 years, btw 😉Sold one last week with 4 offers at closing date - was on the market for 7 days - Clydebank, if you want to know.

Firstly - your mortgage valuation a year ago is now irrelevant. Mortgage valuations are not home reports and again, we’re in a different market.
Secondly - I highly recommend you get the ball rolling with ensuring your home can be put on the market immediately. It often takes a few weeks to get a home on the market, meanwhile you’re happy to run the clock on their home report down, whilst not happy to do the same for your own.

In this market you’re not an appealing buyer, sorry to break it to you.

I'm in Scotland and currently looking for a house too! My own house is not on the market because, just like you, I have small children and I've been trying to find a house for around 6 months with no luck and I'm not willing to put us into the position of having sold our house with nowhere to go. We don't have family to stay with and due to a few factors, renting, putting our stuff into storage, moving twice etc just isn't feasible. I don't think it's at all unusual to do this here. I actually only moved to this house not that long ago and out of the many people who came to view my old house, none of them had sold their current home yet. Also the houses I've viewed recently, the sellers have already secured another property before selling their own. I think it sounds like the sellers of the house you're interested in are just holding out for another buyer who offers more. If you're really keen on the house then just wait and see. I wouldn't say anything about gradually reducing your offer. I feel that would just put them off you as a buyer. A couple of thousand under home report value isn't unusual here either. If nobody else offers or somebody else offers less and they get nervous, they'll come back to you to accept your offer.

If they don’t want to accept my offer then fine… my issue is with them keeping me on the back burner. Obviously I’m not going to randomly get a home report done on my house unless I’m going to sell it, and I’m not going to sell it until I have a house to go to.

What is their situation?

another Scottish person here - maybe get your post moved to Scotsnet if you only want Scottish perspectives?

Anyhoo back to your question. No you wouldn’t be out of order pulling your offer, but I would’nt be accepting an offer from you nor would my pals. Your house isn’t ready to put on sale, you’ve no mortgage in principal, I’d be waiting for a serious buyer, not one who might be in a position to buy in 3 -4 months

I know someone who just sold in a village in central belt for 10% over asking, to a cash buyer who’s in rented having sold their own house already. Another buyer offered 20% over asking, however had a house to sell and wasn’t on market, and therefore they weren’t the appealing buyer. Time is worth money too, so someone who could move in next month because they had their house sold won, even though they didn’t offer the most, but don’t let me lecture you on that seeing as you know everything 😉

Thanks, it’s good to see a post from someone who’s been in the same boat. I can’t believe the amount of post suggesting that I should randomly put my house on the market and hope for the best!

im in scotland and when i was selling a house i wouldnt accept an offer if the buyer wasnt proceedable so if your house wasnt sold and you ready to go it was a no
i wasnt willing to wait on you getting your shit together, home report done etc when i could accept an offer by someone who could get moving straight away

So what if your mythical buyer has a house to sell that’s not on the market when they make you an offer, you’d be happy to wait for them and not hold out for someone who’s ready to move immediately? These delays add up, are you happy to sit in a chain for months?

It’s an ex rental house, from what I gather the couple have split up and aren’t talking- I only know this as during the week the estate agent told me she’d spoken to the woman, who was happy to take my offer, but was waiting on a reply from the man, she said it was a “delicate” situation. She then obviously came back to me and said she’d spoken to him and he’d rather 1st time buyer..

What we did was made an offer conditional on us selling within 4 weeks. If we didn’t sell in 4 weeks they could put it back on the market. 4 weeks is a long time to sell in Scotland.

So they will want the house sold ASAP.

Am I missing something here?

Surely if a potential buyer of your house thinks and acts like you (won't sell until they see a house they like) then the whole process grinds to a halt as no one can see YOUR house as it's not on the market?

Yes, if they offer me what I want and after a week or so are the only offer on the table then yes. However, I don’t think this will be the case, I’ve offered (recently) on 2 other houses in the estate I currently live in, both had multiple offers over the home report. We lost out on both as we were outbid.

The house we’ve put the offer on needs serious TLC, I don’t think there will be anywhere near the interest.

But you don’t know that. Many buyers like having work to do, I’ve just offered on a house that needs loads of work. It doesn’t put people off, it just appeals to a different type of buyer.

I sold and bought in Scotland earlier this year. I put my house on the market, got 8 viewings in the 1st week, started looking for a new house, saw 1 I liked, gave an expression of interest and made clear I was likely to have an agreed offer within 2 weeks. Got 3 offers within a week,. 2 above the asking by 40k and 1 above by 39k. I accepted 1 of the offers from a cash buyer and at that point put our offer in on the house we wanted, which was accepted. All within 2 weeks of putting our house on the market. It was made very clear to me that our offer would not have been accepted without us having a firm and proceedable offer on our own house

It didn't all proceed that smoothly as our initial buyer withdrew their offer after nearly 4 weeks - but luckily one of the other 2 who were initially interested still were and we reverted to them, with the final sale and purchase taking place on the same day 3 months to the day after we advertised ours.

If you sell yours and don't find a house you like you might have to pull out of your sale - horrid as that is for everyone and something to be avoided if at all possible. Your solicitors will guide you and protect your interests. So long as you haven't signed the missives you are not contractually committed to move.

You totally have to have your house at least on the market if you want to be taken seriously as a buyer

I have a mortgage in principle already, and a solicitor lined up to put an offer in if one of verbally accepted.

At the end of the day, your sellers are the only ones who will be able to say if they’re happy to take your offer and be in a chain that hasn’t even begun yet.

Also they may have other viewers and yes your offer may be being used as leverage, I know I’d be trying to source a more secure buyer if they didn’t want to be in a chain and I don’t mean that to sound cruel, but that was my job and duty to the seller.

I hope you manage to get a house regardless, it is a very stressful process even in the best of times trying to get a chain to line up!

They don’t have any other offers, only ours… so as far as I’m concerned, accept or decline..

I’m in England but from what you’ve described the logic is the same everywhere. Of course it’s better to have a deadline for the answer, it’s not unreasonable at all. However how long to wait depends on how much you like the house and what your situation is e.g you need to move quickly for job or pregnancy.
From the other side the seller can have their preferences and you can’t do anything about it. Separating couples might be especially tricky sellers, you don’t know - one of them might be
against the sale in principle hence that 1st time buyer nonsense, also the price should cover buying of 2 houses.
The general consensus here seems that you’d look better with your house on the market but if it doesn’t work for you - it won’t work for you.
I would be vary of you as a buyer, I would suspect that you’d want keep everything absolutely hassle free for your children and it might be at my expense e.g you might want to wait like end of school year or other certain dates when I would want to speed things up. However your approach might be ok for some sellers.

Scottish person who had bought/sold within the last few months, also with two small children.

We put an offer in before our house was on the market, but the agent selling the house had valued our house and knew we were “good” for the money, plus we had a mortgage in principal for about £50k more than the house value (as well as a decent chunk of equity)

property values have dropped considerably in the past year, so definitely get someone out to value your house - ideally from the agency selling the house you want to buy.

We put ours on the market with the agent we bought through; therefore he was able to convey to our seller that our house was going to sell well and so on.

We did 12 viewings over 2 days, then announced a closing date, had three repeat viewings and four offers. It sold after 5 days on the market for 10% over valuation; we offered 5% over value on the house we bought.