AIBU to reduce our accepted house offer after selling ours cheaply?

[Miserablestrawberry]

We offered asking price on a house (825k) a couple of weeks ago (the house had only just been put on the market), and the offer was accepted but the vendors refused to take the house off of the market (completely understandable) and have had multiple viewings but no offers since.

We’ve now accepted an offer on our house. Due to the market, we’ve accepted quite a low offer (650k when we were initially valued at 700-715k from multiple agents) as the market seems to have sunk since the Iran war. We wanted to accept an offer Asap so that we can formalise the offer on the property mentioned.

As we’ve accepted a fairly low offer, would it be seen as cheeky to amend our initial offer on the house we wish to buy? We were thinking of going back at £815k.

Wait until you have the valuation survey on it.

There is no way I would have accepted an offer, or taken my house off the market, for someone whose house didn't have an offer on it.

How could you be sure you would be able to afford the offer you made?

You can certainly ask but who knows if they will accept.

What your house is worth is kind of irrelevant to the value of theirs tbh.

It just feels ‘unfair’ (sorry, not really the right word!) that we’ve dropped our house so much but then our seller has got full asking price purely because we are super keen on it!

I’d tell you to shove it. Lol.

Yeah I agree. I was expecting them to say no when we offered.

This time of year is usually peak house buying time and four viewings in the first two weeks isn't many and illustrates the state of the market. Are other properties in your area selling reasonably quickly? On the face of it your sellers sound like they are asking too much.

Then the question is how much do you love it. Do you still love it as much at 825 as you do at 815? what difference is 10k materially going to make your life. would you be ok losing it for the sake of 10k or would you kick yourself? Are there lots of other nice houses available to you?

I mean mortgage rates etc have gone up a lot in just two weeks so reasonable excuse but honestly i wouldn't risk losing a dream home over like 2% of asking price?

You offered (to be willing to pay the) asking price but didn't have an offer on yours?

They said they'd take it but until you got an offer you were not of much use to them.

You took a hit on price you expected when you said you'd buy theirs.

Are your buyers cash, not in a chain?

You are thinking of a less than 2% reduction in what you said you'd pay. It's really not much. Price of a small kitchen? If market is more cautious right now, which is why you took the hit, that's a reason. But you might upset them. but it's just a transaction.
I echo Pippa12 and Crunchtmum. If you want to try it, do.

They won’t reduced the price if the house has only been on the market for such a short time and they had an offer on it. They will be feeling reasonably confident. What you had to do to sell your house had nothing to do with them.

You can ask but I don’t think it will be the outcome you want and you need to be prepared to lose the house.

The market is so crap at the moment the only positive is I doubt they will get any higher offers..

Yes all correct.

I agree that it’s not much in the grand scheme of things. Hence why we have accepted a low offer on ours.

It would be nice to ‘gain’ from somewhere though after accepting a low offer on our own property and mortgage rates having shot up in the past couple of weeks.

If you had been offered £715k for yours, would you increase your offer? Obviously not.

it’s not your seller’s fault you chose to accept a significantly low offer for your house - that’s on you!

@Miserablestrawberry
i agree it doesnt add up. Why would they not acfept an offer above asking and take it off the market? Have you made your 2nd offer while not being proceedable?

if thats the case i think it is cheeky to reduce now.
what i would do if i were you is to say we have agreed an offer on our home, we re now proceedable so you need to take it off the market.
then do the full survey and see if there is anything thats wrong and if you can reduce a bit.

or offer 10/15k cash and reduce your offer to 815. That way you pay total 825/830 on the condition that you complete within 3 months. I know a lot of people who did that including us and it worked.
but negotiate with sense and be reasonable. Vendors can smell cheekiness by a mile

Our buyers are in a chain unfortunately.

Can you go back with it in a slightly different way. Like say we know they are in a hurry and we have had a low offer Which we can accept but will need to reduce our offer too

There is no way I would have accepted an offer, or taken my house off the market, for someone whose house didn't have an offer on it.

Yes, they shouldn't have accepted the offer. They should have told their estate agents they are only interested in offers from people who are proceedable. In effect, they haven't really accepted the offer, they have just indicated that they would.

However OP is now proceedable and the house is still being marketed for sale so I see no reason why OP shouldn't offer a lower price.

Well that's just tough shit! Not unfair at all. No one forced you to drop your price and accept a lower offer on yours. It doesn't follow through that you're therefore entitled to a reduced price on the house you've offered on. Your financial position is irrelevant to them apart from confirmation that you've got the funds to buy their house.

I get the sense you'd be a problematic buyer and if I was the vendor I'd refuse your lower offer. You can ask them but don't be surprised if they say no.

You can ask. They may say no. The fact they haven't taken it off the market makes you think maybe they're expecting a better offer, (more money or someone more ready to move maybe).

But you've already upped your offer and are now lowering it, so not sure if they might think you are possibly a little flaky and might say forget it. That would be my only concern

They wouldn’t accept as they wanted to put an offer in on a property themselves. And those sellers had said they would only accept if they were proceedable (basically a long chain).

We made an offer of the asking price and the sellers said yes we would accept that price but we won’t remove from the market. We went back and offered £10k above the asking price and asked if they would remove from the market at this price and they said no, as they just really wanted to be able to offer on a house that they had found themselves.

We’re now proceedable and I’m asking if it’s cheeky to now go back at £10k under the asking price (which I obviously wouldn’t do if they had removed their house from the market upon our original offers).

Yes this is what happened. They didn’t really accept the offer, just said that they would accept that offer if we were proceedable.

As would I

I’m not a problematic buyer at all. Some here have suggested lowering my offer upon receipt of the survey but I wouldn’t do that - the price that I offer (and is accepted), would be my final offer. I wouldn’t be messing around reducing offers after a survey etc.

Why? Even if you were desperate to have an offer accepted on a property yourself?

I wouldn’t take my house off the market if the buyer still had to sell their house.

Realistically you can withdraw your offer and revise it. They are under no obligation to accept it and if they've had multiple viewings in 2 weeks, it's unlikely. So it depends on how quickly you want to move it along. £10k is neither here nor there in the scheme of that value, I'd be waiting for the survey. If you want to reflect what's happening in the market then offer a much reduced price like £790k but be prepared to lose it.

I would speak to the EA to say that if you honour the price as it stands with evidence the market is tanking and mortgage rates going out, that if the house isn't marked as under offer and viewings stopped you will withdraw your offer as you are not committing to costs in valuations and surveys while there's a risk of being gazumped.