Gazumping. WWYD?

[CuthbertDibble]

Accepted an offer on our property two weeks ago, received an offer from a different person three days later after at £10k more.

Did the decent thing and said no, already accepted an offer.

Today they have come back and offered a further £25k (so £35k more than accepted offer).

I know that gazumping is a terrible thing but that's a huge amount of money, it makes a massive difference.

WWYD?

hmm. This is business, not sentiment so you are right to consider.

BUT do they REALLY have the money? Is your house actually worth that much? Do you risk losing two buyers?

Good questions. My gut says I don't like the man that's made the higher offer BUT, allegedly, he is a cash buyer. The flat is in a really good location with fantastic views and the local market is very buoyant.

DH has suggested that we ask him to lodge a deposit upfront with our solicitor to prove his commitment.

We went to final sealed bids and then we got an offer to gazump after we had accepted our best bid.
We decided to honour our original acceptance, they came back & offered higher we still decided to do the honourable thing. (it was substantial differences in money too).
We heard no more until talking to a friend who was selling around the corner from us, the same couple who tried to gazump our sale did the same with theirs. They accepted the offer and it was all well and good albeit a bit drawn out until the survey when they mysteriously found a lot of spurious problems which they wanted to knock the price back down to below the original offer that they had gazumped. They refused, the couple pulled out and disappeared.
They wasted lots of time and ended back at the beginning. They finally sold at the original price, greatly delayed and the buyers survey funnily enough didn't find any of the items the gazumpers said were needed.

For reference all our buyers were cash buyers who had their finances checked prior to offer.
As well as feeling it was the honourable thing to do, my gut feeling about the gazumpers was that they were a bit odd and it wasn't quite right.
Our sale went easily and without problems, I think we had a lucky escape.

My gut feeling is to stick with the offer we've already accepted, 'do as you would be done by'.

DH is seeing £ signs, we don't argue about much but this one has been a bit of an ongoing battle.

hmm again. Why do they think your house is worth so much more than the other buyers do?
I can see a sudden price drop just before exchange scenario - again, see another thread.

if it seems too good to be true, it usually is.

DH once accepted an offer from a 'cash buyer' that the agents vouched for. Turned out that they would be a cash buyer once they had refurbished three flats, and remortgaged them (with three separate lenders!). The sale took over a year, and the agent involved got sacked. It's left me wary of the advantages of cash buyers, regardless of the morals of it. We were gazumped twice when trying to buy but ended up in the nicest house we saw, so I feel rather grateful now!

Very tough... I get that you want to do the right thing, but agree with special subject... You're not here to make friends, and the bottom line is that you dont have a contract with anybody at the moment.

On the other hand, there may be a middle ground. Could you go back to your current buyer, say you've been offered higher, and ask if they have any room for manoeuvre before you make any drastic decisions. You might find they're prepared to up their offer by 10, 15, 20k, giving you a better deal AND with the person you'd rather sell to.

I would stick with the original buyer. As pp have said is your flat really worth that much more? Plus if they are willing to put morals aside to do that to the people who have already had an offer accepted how well do you think they will treat you? You said you didn't like the man much - I would trust your gut on this

For an extra £35k I'd have to give it a go. It may not work out but it sounds like your flat is v saleable so could always re-market if this cash buyer doesn't work out.

It's tough on your original buyer but it's only been 2 weeks and that is too big a difference to not give it a go

Id say yes. 35 is a lot of money.

In this case, I'd say go with BrownSauce's suggestion. I can understand the lure of the 35k though. From a risk perspective, if you & DH go the 'accept the gazumping offer' route though, how about you limit that by insisting they get survey done this week and finalise next week via non-returnable 20% deposit? That way, if they do pull out using the old 'survey has revealed x/y/z' chestnut, you won't have lost out financially. It may well be that the gazumper is perfectly honest, but just not very nice and willing to pull out all the stops to get what he wants (i.e. your house).

I'd agree you need to clarify what 'cash' means.

To you and I it means there is, you know, cash, in a bank.

To an agent it means 'as soon as they've sold their house that will have cash'.

World of the mad!

I will contact my solicitor and see what options we may have regarding an upfront, non-returnable, deposit. If the man really wants it that much then he won't have a problem with it. If he refuses then I'll assume he's playing us and is planning to vastly reduce his offer (or pull out) at exchange.

We've had a few issues with another, non-contracted, agent 'borrowing' the keys from the concierge to show someone around the place. My gut is telling me that these two things may be related, although I'm not quite sure how or why.

We had this recently. Went to best offers and went with the best offer. The second highest came back the next day and offered to beat the best offer by £5k. We said no, and polished our halos. They then came back and offered £60k more. OK, crazy London prices, but still.

The trouble is, £60k is life changing. We felt that we had to go with it. We haven't exchanged yet so I don't know whether we'll get it in the end, but then we don't know if the first sale would have gone through at that price. We felt that the only guarantee if we turned down the higher offer was that we'd be potentially losing £60k. We just couldn't risk it. We offered to pay any costs the first lot had lost, but in fact they were very sweet about it, said they quite understood, and didn't ask for anything.

Good luck!

I just have a comment from the gazumperer side. I lost out in best and final bids, but next day offered 10k more. The vendor honoured the original highest bidder - fair enough.

Why I did that - on the day when I offered my initial offer, the agent called back saying there is another offer and so it goes to best and final offers - can you call us back asap? Not even 2 hours later the agent calls me insisting on my best and final offer, so I said some higher number.

From my owned perspective, I do not deal well with the pressure at all and go into panicky mode when need to decide quickly. I start feeling shaky when I am asked to part with thousands of pounds more in the matter of couple of hours. I need to sleep on it; this is not always possible.

I would also suggest a non-refundable deposit; 35k is a BIG money!

Hell yeah I'd go for it , it would make a massive difference to us, the original offer could fall through and you'd be kicking yourself.