Please help! Second offer on the table

[dismum90]

We were planning to exchange contracts next week with our buyers but it turns out their solicitors hadn't received their formal instructions so hadn't done any searches. We believe they have been sent off now but felt like we have been lied to the past few weeks! We are in a position to move now.

Today we have received an offer £15K over the price our buyer has done (cash buyer pending the sale of their house - also cash buyer - no chain) it's from someone we know so don't think there will be any messing about it would only be from their buyer.

We lost a buyer earlier in the year and luckily the house we are buying held on for us but this has been 6 months now. Any delay I think we may loose our house which we don't want to jeprodise.

We are at a loss! It's no short amount of money but I also know morally it is wrong! Husband thinks we need to consider and wants to discuss with the estate agent tomorrow. Has anyone been in their situation before? A cross between money/morals!! What did you do??

I'd go with the second offer. Selling a house is a transaction, you don't have a moral obligation to sell it to the buyers who didn't really follow up with the offer.
Will they lose any money at this stage?

Go with the second buyer.

The first have had their chance

Shocking no ground work has been doen

@theothermum yes they would but my DH has always said if we do go ahead with the second offer he would reimburse them for any payments they've made.

I'm not sure they would up their offer to by that much!

I just hope if we do go down this road we don't loose our house!!

@GreenTulips I know! I was furious the other day when we found out.

My main concern is I don't want to loose the house we are buying so guess a call to the state agents to get a better idea is the next stage realistically!

I wouldn't want to lose out either.

It sounds a bit (cynical I know) like they were buying time - maybe they had seen another house.

I would be honest and tell them due to the delay and having someone else ready to move you want to accept the new offer.

If you decide to pay the first parties costs that up to you.

If you are ready for exchange and they hadn't even instructed the solicitor to start searches then they are not being serious and just stringing you along, how long ago did you accpet their offer?

Also you do not need to refund them anything as that is the risk before exchange. They have made no effort to buy so go with the second buyer.

So our buyer have had their valuation done and mortgage accepted. We accepted their offer 6 weeks ago.

We spoke to our estate agent this morning who said that they wouldn't advise us pulling out of our sale at the moment until the other buyer is ready to proceed as their buyer could pull out at any time

Your buyers probably didn't want to incur the cost of searches until they had their mortgage offer - that this has taken 6 weeks could be entirely down to their mortgage lender. Their solicitor will be acting for them and the mortgage provider. Six weeks isn't a long time in the scheme of things - you can expect the process to take around another six weeks so completion could be around 19th or 20th December. Yes, it's £15k more but these buyers have shown commitment, albeit at a slower pace than you think you should have acted.

You can't plan to exchange at any time unless everyone in the chain is ready.

I would totally agree with what wow fudge has said. I agree it feels like they are dragging out the process but especially if money is tight it's likely and probably best practice to first wait to find out you can honour your offer before instructing other costly parts of the procedure

What you choose to do is your choice, but it's developments like this that make many people wary of the whole house buying process...

@Lilmisskittykat I fully understand and agree. From my understanding, if we were more like Scotland this wouldn't even be an option! Which I fully support! The whole stress of buying and selling house would be made so much more minimal if we had better assurances which I'm all for supporting.
Unfortunately as it stands it is an option and we had already been offered nearly £10K more but turned it down as it is morally not right I fully get that but £15k is a substantial amount of money (for us anyway)
Personally I'm swaying more towards saying no as it just doesn't sit right even though the extra money would be nice. We were happy without it before!!

@wowfudge has it right & 6 weeks is not that long. 15k probably isn't a life changing amount of money & you have no idea if the 2nd offer will go through or if they'll knock money off (survey, their buyer lowers offer etc) Your vendors may pull out if any further delays or get a higher offer themselves. A bird in the hand & all that.

You have no idea of the first one will happen either

If your sellers get twitchy you can offer them a couple of grand as an incentive to keep the home for you

@dismum90 I absolutely agree 15k is a lot of money. Especially when buying a house there's a lot extra you can do to your new home with that extra money.

It's a risk... that's your choice but as a buyer I'd be gutted if the house I was buying and probably been planning mentally furnishing and decorating was suddenly not for me anymore.

I've just had a house I wanted to buy taken off the market, now I've not spent a penny or invested much in to thoughts wise but I was (and still am) a bit blue about it all