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.

they hadn't accepted your offer yet, so it's fine. Let us know how it goes and good luck.

I’m another one who thinks you’ve not had an offer accepted and given what’s happening with mortgage rates it’s fine to now put in a lower offer. It is a gamble however. If the house is very desirable or they’re in an unusually resilient market they may decide to hold out. The estate agent can surely give you a sense of interest?

They didn't accept the original offer so it's all fair game.

Of course you can amend your offer. Exchange hasn't happened you can withdraw the offer of 825k explaining that you have had to accept a lower offer than expected on your property as the market has dropped. Everything is dropping at the moment it's very common for everyone in the chain to have to accept a bit under to get things moving. And you then say you can now only offer 815k but it's a proceedable offer as you have an offer accepted on yours.

The way the market is right now they'd be foolish to turn you down if they actually want to move - nothing is selling and people who won't budge on price are just getting stuck for months/years.

If you want to ask, of course you can. Every one is different and they might be very happy to come down a bit if you are able to proceed and it looks like it will be a quick turn around.
Equally they might have £825 fixed in their minds now and not be willing to budget at all.
You won't know until you ask.
Good luck OP!

Of course you can amend your offer ! You can offer what you like

You can ask but they might not take it off the market again. Because they might be waiting for someone to come along who is a cash buyer. All literally sold up.
I would enquire what they meant by proceedable. They won’t take it off the market until proceedable. What does that mean to them ?

Does it mean you have SSTC ? Or a cash buyer all ready to go as in now.

Unfortunately house sales aren’t fair in this way - houses are only worth what someone is willing to pay. You wanted their house so much that you offered asking price. You haven’t had someone interested enough in yours to offer your asking price. One way to look at it is - you liked their house enough to offer asking price, do you also like it enough to accept a lower offer on your house to move the sale along quickly? It seems you’ve already made this decision by accepting the lower offer. It’s got nothing to do with them that you made this decision. You still can change your offer (legally anyway) and they can decide whether to accept your lower offer, but fairness doesn’t come into it. Bear in mind that if they do agree, it will save you £10k but there may be less good will left on their side later in the process.

@Miserablestrawberry you can always ask - explain you have had a lower offer on your house. Explain it is significantly lower and therefore you will need to reduce your offer but not by anything like as much.

If the house has not been on the market long that is likely why they want to wait. So they will possibly say no.

Personally I’d want to wait longer before accepting the low offer you have and I’m a firm believer that you will find ‘another’ right place for you even if this one feels like your dream house and you lose it though …

In my experience many vendors won’t take the house off the market until the survey report is done. They certainly won’t take it off the market for an offer from a buyer who hasn’t had an offer on their own - I think it’s called an offer in principle because the buyer can’t proceed until they have their own offer.

I’d reduce the offer based on the fact that I’d accepted a reduced offer for mine and the market is so dire. If they’d taken theirs off the market in good faith with the previous offer, I’d feel differently. But as they didn’t I really don’t see the problem in asking. I’m not sure what is so annoying about it personally - it’s surely all part of a property negotiation.

You don’t know where they are - and given you are guessing, signals you are a messer

if they accepted an over offer price that’s unusual at the moment but good for them it means they won’t have any problem getting another buyer who is serious

hate people who mess around after the fact

of course they won’t accept lower offer - their property sounds very marketable

Miserablestrawberry · Today 15:52
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!

this is ridiculous - their house is better priced than yours and is marketable - it’s no concern of seller what you've done with yours - maybe you overpriced it - you sound like a school
kid

In my opinion they left themselves open to you reducing your offer by keeping their house on the market.

They chose to keep their options open so you then have the same right and go to them with a revised offer.

It would only be CF territory had they taken the house off the market. But even then, it’s a buyers market so you would be foolish not to use that to your advantage.

Had a similar-ish situation a couple of years ago.

Sold our house for way less than the EAs originally said, BUT the house we had our eye on also reduced price a lot, and then accepted even less from us than they had reduced it to.

The people who bought our house could only buy it because we had reduced, which in turn meant they could accept a lower offer (they'd been keeping their eye on ours for a while too!)

My point is, people normally need X because they need to pay Y for the next place. You've reduced to sell, if they accept a lower offer from you but can also offer a lower price on their next place... it could all work out. And you'll all pay less EA fees (if comission based) and on stamp duty too. Hopefully you can have an open conversation along the line other posters have suggested (we've had an offer but it's lower than we would have liked, would you go lower if you can get your next place lower etc) and it all works out. Good luck

And show the they aren’t serious

cos that’s what I’d think

They seem to have a marketable
property because OP
offered over asking price - they are likely to get that again from someone who is actually sure about what they are doing

Worst case scenario is they feel the same way about people pulling this kind of stunt as several posters on the thread, tell you no and refuse to sell to you.

if you can accept this worst case scenario then take a shot.

you dont need to understand why some people feel this way, you just need to accept thst they do and that it is possible your sellers may too.

in the past, yes but this is not a sellers’ market. In this market sellers need to price competitively and be grateful for any decent offers they can get.

This is assuming they are serious, of course.

If they aren’t, they can sit on it and have desultory viewings every so often till the market turns, inflation eroding the purchase price every month.

I assume they have lawyers lined up and are ready to go, ‘proceedable’ one might even say, themselves?

I think you need to change your way of thinking OP. No one has made you accept a lower offer than you’d like on yours - you chose to accept that lower offer, you didn’t have to. But that doesn’t mean your buyers have to accept a lower offer just because you chose to do that. Quite honestly, for the sake of 10 grand, and you not being stretched budget wise, I’d leave your offer as is, on the understanding they take theirs off the market now and you both proceed with the sales.

As a matter of interest, OP, why did you offer asking price in this market? Often, agents put it on higher than the sellers are expecting to receive just in order to win the business.

If no one bites, the agent has a mournful conversation with the seller about the market having fallen and persuades them to drop the price. (This cut is visible online so anyone interested knows what’s going on.)

If their house is so marketable they would have had another offer whilst waiting for OP to become proceedable and gone with that. More likely is that the discussions with OP took place pre war which was a very different market.

Completely irrelevant.

By all means put in your revised offer and see what they say. If I was in their position though I would be very wary about selling to you. This is your third different offer and I’d be concerned about you continuing to alter it during the sales process. You might know you’re not going to do this - but they don’t know that.

Thats where you are wrong.

you made an offer you were not proceedable;
now you are
so either you stick to it - maybe go back to asking
or you ask them to reduce it - they will say no (i would)

you only know what you are buying for what you have seen.

the survey is there to tell you what you havent seen, the bones of the property.
you could have dry rot, damp, to name but a few issues.
no bid deal - it wouldnt put me off - but it would cost £££ to fix it so you need to factor that in. Thats when you REALISTICALLY and REASONABLY reduce your offer or pull out to balance the risk.

on one property, the seller had to get a building insurance to cover the dodgy DIY they did including a loft conversation - then we fixed their crap development. This one sting. But I had PND with a 5 minths old and a 19 month old so bought a house that looked like we could just bring our suitcases and start living.

on another one we had to reduce by 8k because of the rising damp and some issues with the roof.

on the one we are in currently, we were buying a 5 bedroom house. We offered 30k over asking to give her an offer she couldnt refuse - the house was derelict but we wanted a project.

Upon searches, itturns out the 5th bedroom was an illegal development in the attic. The estate made a big mistake by not askj g for proof and marketing it as 5. They could have been in a huge trouble.
we went back to asking price. She threatened to pull back (we re in ireland so she would have had to hive us our deposit back) and go back to market.
but it was late august, schools had started and she s an hoarder so we said yeah good luck with that, call us back when you ve made your decision

we got the house.

This is why legally you have to survey and do the searches. This is the only place where you can reasonably reduxe