or even immoral over house sale? Legal/ estate agent input especially welcome

[horsish]

I have been trying to sell my house for months without much luck. Recently a potential buyer, mr X liked the house, had it surveyed, and said he was prepared to offer x amount (quite a bit below asking price), realised this was less than we hoped but wanted to be upfront BEFORE putting offer in.

We thought about it and agreed to accept an offer of that amount and told him so. He is currently overseas and emailed back to say he would indeed be putting in an offer for x.
That was ten days ago and i have not heard from him.

I was for taking it off the market but agent advised not to till legal offer received.

Meanwhile Mrs Y comes along , loves the house and offers Y which is ABOVE the asking price. Estate agent has ben trying to get a hold of Mr X ( who is NOT likely to up his offer anyway)but he is not answering any communication

AIBU to accept the higher offer having verbally agreed the lower ( which has not been made in writing)?

Could you at least enlighten us as to the total difference between Mr X's loe offer and Mrs Y's higher one.

Are we talking a couple of thousand or tens of thousands ?

I think your neighbours and Mr X are in collusion over getting the house on the cheap for him. I can just imagine them toasting their joint success over dinner and drinks one night afer Mr X had moved in.

You have done nothing immoral but your old neighbours are bordering on immoral (at the very least plain selfish) in trying to make you feel guilty about accepting a better offer when no firm low offer was even on the table yet. You don't personally know Mr X, there were any number of reasons why he may have dithered, including only being swayed by the price and actually preferring a more expensive property elsewhere but finally deciding yours was a bargain and thinking he could sell on later if he didn't like it after all.

If you want to retain this "friendship", can you introduce a little white lie such as "dh's firm may be looking to downsize and if his name comes up as a target for being downsized we'll need every penny we can get".

I think your old neighbours are being remarkably self-centred here, they are the ones ruining the friendship, not you.

The only thing I don't understand is how Mr X got a survey done without estate agents being involved? Did you give him the keys? I can now understand why there has been upset if so: He agreed with vendors to buy house, arranged survey, got keys to carry out survey, paid for it.... surely all of this should have been done via the estate agents?

I don't see the problem Squiffy.
I know a couple who have been searching for a house recently. Spent MONTHS and lots of pounds in various surveys.
There was one house they absolutely loved, belonged to a friend of theirs as it happened, but after getting their own surveyor in decided it was not worth the asking price. So, they offered something more in line with the advice, and were told that, although they were not going to completely ignore the offer, the owner would keep it on the market.

She found someone else- has sold it to them, and actually for not much more above what my friends had offered in the first place.
So, they paid for a survey- their choice- and did not get the house. Tough.

No love lost, no issues have arisen. All still friends. Handled professionally, and as a business transaction- which it was/is. The OP has done the right thing, and should ignore the neighbours trying to involve emotions.....

YANBU - but your ex-neighbours are! I do sympathise though - we are hopefully moving soon. I told our neighbours that we had sold to a very nice man who intends to rent the house out to his much younger sister whilst she is at university locally. My neighbour was furious - said that was the last thing they wanted! Tbh - it really took the shine off it for a bit - till dh told me not to be carzy and that their feelings had nothing to do with it! In yor case - Mr X obviously thought he could be as slow and cheap as he liked - well he's found out differntly. Well done you for getting a better price!

And what is wrong with Mrs Y - don't tell me she has dogs, a motorbike, a russian lover or children????

BT - my point is that you don't normally do a survey until the estate agent gets an offer and then the estate agent arranges the survey. So how did the survey happen if there was no formal offer on the table in the first place?

Sure, offers get withdrawn by the buyers for loads of reasons and sellers are entitled to refuse a lower offer put in as a result of a survey but the OP seems to be saying that there was no offer put in by Mr X in the first place...hence the question - how did Mr X manage to do a survey without putting in an offer and without using the estate agents? Somewhere the wheels have fallen off and Mr X is out of pocket, but I can't work out how the survey happened in the first place.... if the sellers accepted the offer direct from the buyer and followed it up with "and here are the keys, you can go and arrange the survey", then if I were Mr X I would be extremely annoyed to then be told (after paying the money for the survey) that the deal was off, havign gone and arranged a survey in good faith (that sounds like a pretty commited buyer). That doesn't mean of course that the OP is NOT perfectly entitled to legally withdraw on account of a better offer coming in (it happens all the time, unfortunately), but it does muddy the moral waters a bit and would explain the neighbours getting a bit uppity too....

Squiffy - my reading of it is that mr X said - I like the house but want to do a survey first - so the vendors co-operatetd - he then proposed an amount but failed to follow up on this with a formal offer and details of funding, solicitors and chain - all of which forms as much a part of the offer as the price itself imo. Then Mrs y comes along - who does propose a price plus all the confirming details so they go with her - imo are perfectly morally justified in doing so!

Re the survey - it is still his fault. In England it's practice to make your offer subject to survey. If he chose to commission a survey then disappear for 10 days, it is not your fault. For all you knew he could have had a change in circumstances or discovered something that put him off. It's a tough world and you did the right thing!

The way things are at the moment i would sell my house to satan if the offer was anywhere near the asking price

YANBU.

He snoozed, he loozed.

Do you know what the srvey may throw up as needing attention? Is the cost of that work more than the difference in offers? And then who is in a better position to follow through on their offer?

He may not even have had a proper survey done. He may have paid his mortgage lender money to carry out a valuation, in which case the valuer would merely drive by the house to see if the property is worth what he wanted to borrow.

Taking a career break at the mo but am a conveyancer. From a legal perspective until contracts are exchanged you can do what you like. Speaking morally I would say that the transaction is still so much in the early stages that you go with whatever offer is most appealing and whoever is looking most likely to be committed, get their finger out and complete the process especially in this current market. Obviously sounds like Mrs Y in this instance. Hard luck Mr X, he should have been more on the ball. IMO

Have re-read the OP and it is clear that Mr. X had his survey done before making any sort of offer. So even if horsish had said no at the very outset, he would still have paid out that money.

Whichever way you look at it, Mr. X didn't do what he said he was going to do, i.e. put in an official offer, and it was entirely reasonable of horsish to start looking for another buyer.

I honestly think that the ex-neighbours are more involved in this transaction than they are letting on. Either they encouraged Mr. X to think that he could have the house at a low price and he therefore delayed putting in his offer (which was low and unacceptable by that stage) or they've pressed him to offer and he wasn't that interested in living next door to them anyway.

Ah, if he had the survey done with a view to making an offer, then indeed he has been a numbnut. Mind you am very envious that in these markets OP managed to get 2 offers. Far too greedy

YANBU. You haven't heard from the original guy for 10 days? He can't be very serious. Go for the higher offer a.s.a.p

Freckle is right.
he got the survey done (with our full cooperation) THEN had a discussion about how much he was prepared to offer, asking us if it was worth his while going ahead with formal ( ie legal, written, ) offer.
We said (after much deliberation )yes, we wwould accept such an offer.... and then never heard a peep from him for two weeks during which time Mrs Y came to see the house and got her skates on and got her offer in pronto.

During the entire 2 weeks the estate agent was chasing him to get his offer in but he was never available and never returned calls.

This had nothing to do with Mrs. Y showing an interest. She only appeared after ten days of silence and unanswered calls from Mr X.
She got her surveyor out and offer in within 24hours of viewing!

Well, your ex-neighbours should think twice about their attitude. It sounds as though Mrs. Y will be a much better neighbour. Just imagine there's a problem that needs sorting (such as fence blown down). Mrs. Y would be on it straight away wherease Mr. X would procrastinate endlessly until, in the end, the neighbours have to do it for him.

freckle you are brilliant . I do love to see a positive spin put on everything.

Are these ex-neighbours really good friends of yours? Is it a friendship you would be sad to lose? You aren't likely to have much contact with them if you now live about 2 hours away.

Do you know the respective purchasers' family situations? Does Mrs. Y have children, but Mr. X doesn't? Is that likely to have a bearing on why the neighbours are upset? I still go with my initial thoughts which were that the neighbours encouraged Mr. X to think he could get it easily and now have egg on their faces.

Why do they think Mrs Y would not be a good neighbour.

Are they assuming that because they know mr X that they will be good neighbours.

at your neighbours. If they want Mr X as a neighbour so much, perhaps they should make an offer to you forthwith then sell the house to him (or someone else they deem acceptable) when he finally gets back in touch. Tsk at the very idea you would sell the house based on who they would prefer as a neighbour.