Aibu to write to the house seller?

[ButterMelonCauliflower]

Long story short… we have sold our house but nowhere to buy. We want to stay local and understand the local housing market.
There’s a house we like but it’s out of our price range. We think it’s over-valued (massive development planned next door to the property - probably why owners are selling). The agent it’s on with has a reputation for overvaluing and the vendors are asking way more than local average increase in the 10 years that they’ve owned it. They tried to sell 2 years ago but failed. Since then the asking price has gone up for no obvious reason.
Two weeks ago we offered 18% below asking price and were rejected.
Yesterday we offered 15% below but agent says they are not willing to negotiate.

AIBU unreasonable to contact them, explaining that we love the house, are not trying to take the piss and are hoping they might reconsider?

YES you are BU. It’s their house and they can ask what they like

NO you are not BU. A letter can’t hurt as long as it’s not too bossy/pushy

Any thoughts?

The EA isn’t allowed to withhold offers but they can agree with the seller in advance the parameters of offers they’ll consider and reject any outside of these without passing them on.

So if the seller agrees with the EA they wouldn’t consider any offer below X% so didn’t want them passed on, the EA could reject your offer straight away. We fell in love with a house and offered without viewing but were rejected by the EA as the sellers said they wouldn’t consider offers before viewing.

And 5. Some people think that wanting something entitles them to have it, provided that they want it enough (which is arguably a subset of (1) above, but is becoming so common that it deserves its own category).

Sorry but I can't agree with you. There are multiple reductions all over Rightmove, developers struggling to sell new builds and the economy is clearly struggling and expected to worsen in the next year and onwards. I agree that some areas will do better but don't think there are many areas where prices are 'rising quickly' and far more where they are falling now.

We didn’t accept under asking price. Instead we went with a lowish valuation with “offers over” and were happy with what we got. It made sense at the time as we trying to sell fast to buy another house. The sale fell through because our buyers lost their buyer so the vendors of the house we wanted pulled out. We have done what I think is the decent thing, and stuck with our buyers. They have now found a new buyer, so the lower end is complete. I guess we could be unkind and try remarketing in the hope it makes what we want a bit more affordable. It just seems a shitty thing to do, as our buyers have paid for survey/lawyer etc

And all those books :"Visualise it and it will happen". Yeh I visualized winning the lottery last week...perhaps it would have helped if I bo bought a ticket!

This is charming. I don’t want it that badly and am perfectly aware that they’re allowed to sell it for what they want and to whom they want. I just don’t think the estate agent has valued the house correctly and I haven’t got time for the vendors to take 6 months to realise that.

I would - she who dares wins! Up your offer to max you can afford and say you've sold your property and can complete soon. We did this several years ago and it worked - we completed in four weeks.
Btw we sometimes get notes asking if we’re selling (we’re not) and it doesn’t offend me at all.

Agreed although that applies equally to both sellers and buyers. I would say it's a bit of combination of 1 and 2. I don't agree with points 3 and 4 in the initial post.

thanks for your reply. It doesn’t offend me either. I think we’ll sit for a bit and see if anything else comes along. We can go back to them if we get desperate!!

Op, be cool
If they think you're happy to walk away, they may get nervous and accept an offer you can afford.

Play the game

Tbh I can see both sides but as they’ve said no and there’s nothing to lose if I were you I’d send a note saying if you do decide to lower please keep us in mind.

You'd give away your power by doing that. It's a desperate move and gives them an opportunity to exploit it. Even if they agreed to sell it to you and you bought it, led by an inflated asking price, there's a good chance you would end up with a house which you realise, too late, wasn't a great purchase, being next to a development and that you overpaid for because of the psychological power of asking price and your over optimistic yearning for a house.

That they have failed to sell it before would usually suggest at least questioning the asking price and possibly that it should come down although it hasn't yet. You need to consider very seriously the prospect of the development and weigh it heavily into the price and value for money calculation.

As they are waiting and expecting or hoping for a higher offer than yours, let them wait and deal with the pressure of the risk that they won't get it. As time goes on that pressure increases and they may have to reduce the asking price or what they'd think an acceptable offer. At that point, you could adjust your offer to a more realistic value for money one than the earlier one you made based on an unrealistic initial asking price.

When you say you've sold you mean that you have a buyer, but the sell isn't really completed and done?

Maybe they have some specific house in mind which they would like to buy, but can't afford it if they sell this for less than X. In such case either they find a buyer who is compatible with their plans or stay there.

How do you know that do you check the address on Land Reg.
Also if the vendor sells to you after you have been introduced by the agent they will be sued by the agent of they find out and will be liable for solicitors and court costs
They are certain to do so when they drive by maybe months later and see you leaving the house
The vendor would be insane to sell to you

Again, this is hugely area dependent and reduced asking prices don't mean anything unless actual sold prices are lower. The House Price Index shows that sold prices increased in the UK last year in most regions and some showed strong growth. Last year wasn't a great year economically and interest rates were higher than they will probably be going forward.

I was selling a house when we had an offer of 10% below asking
No way would I sell to that person as I deemed they were chancers and timewasters
They eventually came back and offered close to asking price by which time we had other offers and had no interest in dealing with them
Problem is the agent may also think you are a time waster now and not take you seriously

They can't negotiate with you outside of their estate agent because they'll have signed an agreement to that effect.

Exactly. The difference in commission is insignificant compared to the hassle of having a house on their books for months on end that's not selling because it's overvalued.

They'd much rather take a marginal reduction in commission for a faster sale.

I am quite interested in the market psychology. We have lived in and love our house for almost 30 years. But it is not close to friends and family so we would like to move. But our current house is so wonderful, we are struggling with all the compromises we would have to make.

You can check sold house prices easily online. I’m not suggesting bypassing the agent

You my friend are a cheeky fucker! Sorry I'm sure you're a lovely person but you are a cheeky fucker!

Hi OP, I've been the vendor in a situation which was similar. I was offered 400k less than the asking price. The estate agent reported back that they thought it was overvalued and theirs was a perfectly reasonable offer and we'll just have to lower the price later on, so we might as well sell now. I just ignored it to be honest. I thought I'd never sell to someone so difficult, so thankfully they were miles off.

We got an offer 50k less than asking price 4 weeks later.

Selling a house takes such a long time and there are so many points of potential failure and upset, I really wouldn't start with putting in an offer widely off the mark and then contact the vendor. It's a bit odd in the nicest possible way.

I wouldn't bother as it sounds like they have been quite clear

I agree that it is area dependent and have said so on previous posts. I don't think many areas are rising quickly though. It's nothing like 2021 now.
The ONS HPI figures are getting constantly revised down and the degree of revisions has increased considerably. They are pretty unreliable. There is a poster called Mark Tabrett who analyses their data and covers this on X if you are interested. I would suggest that things are worsening economically at a faster rate and visibly so. This is why I can't see rapid rises; the opposite, in fact.

It is, it really is. In fact as analogies go, that one makes the point well.

Thing is, we are all different. You say that you "don't understand" why writing a letter might be rude, and that's because you'd not be unhappy to receive one. Fair enough. But that's not likely to be everyone else's take, as has been explained in the replies you've had.

You also say you don't understand why people want to communicate only through the agent. I do. If nothing else, they are being paid a lot of money to do a job, and when I've bought & sold I've always expected the agent to earn their fee. One house I sold because of bad neighbours - I didn't even want to meet my buyers, let alone speak to them, as I wanted nothing to do with the process (and unless someone has sold a house knowing the neighbours were from hell, no one can understand the worry and embarrassment that can be felt by having to off-load the problem onto some other unsuspecting bugger).

It could also be that their insistence that communication is via the agent only is a polite way of saying they don't want to speak to you again.