Is there anything we can do about this?! Please help!

[crispysausagerolls]

My husband and I found our dream home. It came on the market and was inundated with offers - several of which were speculative or had chains upon chains upon chains. We are cash buyers with no chain and put in a reasonable offer. The EA told us our offer was slightly too low, and to suggest another, higher, and we would surely win. We told him to come back with a number that would win as we didn’t want to start bidding against ourselves, and he said he would come back yesterday evening. He did not. Today I received a call, not even from the EA we were dealing with, to say the buyers accepted another offer.

Is this the end? I am heartbroken, but I am also outrageously angry. The estate agent owed us the chance to match the offer, surely? He specifically said he would find out what number we needed to offer and would tell us, and he did not! What if we were prepared to go higher?! Is it all over now the offer has been accepted? It’s also so shitty that the EA couldn’t even tell us himself, and got someone else to do it.

Please help, I am so sad!

@crispysausagerolls I have bought and sold several houses, but buying at the over 1.2 million level is a whole different ball game. We started looking in October 2017 and we will get our keys tomorrow. We are cash buyers who are fortunate enough to have not had to sell other property to finance this sale.
We have had four offers accepted and four surveys.
Two houses had very, very expensive work needing doing (in one case £250K) that was not visible think underpinnng/ changing roof timbers. In both cases the vendors were unrealistic about lowering their price in the face of the survey and builders quotes.
Another house we were used to progress a sale that had stalled.
This sale has not been without it's issues.
From my experience you need to back your offer with proof funds, agents who have only a little experience of this price range often have unrealistic expectations of how you prove funds, at lower amounts seeing a bank statement is acceptable, at this level having solicitor confirm funds is more normal.

House buying does get emotional. Sellers like it when people "fall in love with" houses because it pushes up the price.

Sellers can also be emotional. The sellers of the house I live in now sold it to us because my husband is a keen gardener and they knew he would keep up the lovely veg plots they had created. Do you have a lovely personal story about why they should sell the house to you? Put it in a letter!

lonecatwithkitten

Thank you - very interesting insight!

We have proof of funds and offered to show them, but this was never requested.

I am wondering if, like one of your properties, people will get a nasty shock when it gets to surveys. The reason we had a builder and architect go round with us was to be 100% sure about the cost involved and therefore not waste anyone’s time by offering more and then having to pull out etc. There is a substantial about of work that needs doing. Including some hidden costs as in your example.

Awful that you were used to progress a stall! 😱

Husband is adamant he wants to speak to them himself.

UnexpectedItemInShaggingArea

Hahahaha at your username!!!!! Amazing

Can I just say by the way to everyone, I have been so pleasantly surprised by the amount of response, help and advice received! I was not sure his would get any traffic, and it’s been so illuminating!

happy that I raised a smile at this stressful time.

Mumsnet is stuffed full of Kirstie Allsopp wannabes. I love a good house buy/sell thread.

I hope it works out for you.

It is a different matter asking what the house went for and asking for your offer to be considered.

House went for 1.5 - which to be frank is (I think) insane but fair enough!!!! EA essentially said ours was the most informed bid and he does not know if the 1.5 will stand but if not he knows where we are: husband is saying we would probably stretch to 1.4.

So I guess the search continues, and hopefully it ends up not panning out for whatever reason and we get another chance. Or we find a better house!

Well, in a way that’s a good result. You know you wouldn’t have marched that.

Good luck finding something else.

*matched

Sorry. My iPad screen is cracked.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-80058098.html

No harm sharing this now

That's lovely, it would make a wonderful family home with some updating. Love the very colourful bathroom suite.

It's lovely OP (blue bath!!!) and I'm sorry you missed out. But I bet your house will be even better.

Gorgeous house! I can see why you fell in love with it. Good luck with your hunt, lm sure there is a perfect house out there waiting for you.

I love the blue bath but I'm probably in the minority. My fantasy bathroom is a green or primrose yellow 20s bathroom.

I'm really sorry you've missed out OP.

The strategy for buying a home often defies logic, simply because it's such an emotive situation.

I bought 10 houses over the years (mainly fixer uppers) and offered on many more.

In that time I've learned that if you really want a specific property that's very marketable you have to be really aggressive - by which I mean going in straight away with your best offer.

Equally I've also learned that there's always another "dream" house.

It won't feel like that right now, but you will find something else that you love just as much or even more. It may take time to find, but it hat house is out there.

Given the situation you are in now, the only option I can see is to go back to the EA with your best offer and press them to discuss it with the vendor.

If they refuse, then say you'd like the offer left on the table until the property exchanges and the vendor to be made aware of this.

Lots of deals fall through and just because the vendors have accepted another offer there's no guarantee it will progress cleanly.

If there are long delays, the purchasers turn out to be difficult to deal with etc the vendor might be willing to review and this is especially true if they have a firm "no chain" back up offer on the table.

Lincrusta is a nightmare to get off. Been there done that in a period property and wished I’d left it alone.

I could have loved with the blue suite tho. 😂😂😂

The strategy for buying a home often defies logic, simply because it's such an emotive situation

Absolutely, this is so true.

It is incredibly unwise to treat the home buying process in the same way as your day job working in m & a! Hopefully this is a lesson the OPs husband has now learnt, albeit the hard way.

It’s potentially a lovely house, but the £100,000 additional potential sale price, plus additional stamp duty is just the start of it. It’s a house that needs a fair whack spending on it on top of that.

You’ve gleaned a lot from sharing this experience OP and I’m sure something equally lovely, or different but right for you, will turn up.

www.rightmove.co.uk/s6p/80123009
Similar size detached and a lot cheaper? Obvs needs a lot of work

I can see why you're pissed off, that's a beautiful house and there is nothing like it on thr market. I suspect it went for a lot more than you imagine, even with the work that needs doing.

@Alexalee

Not exactly comparable in terms of property style though.

That is indeed a lovely house.

You never know OP, it could still fall through...there's always all to play for when buying houses.

alexalee

Very sweet of youto have a look at alternatives, but it’s just chalk and cheese!

My one was in a beautiful tree lined street etc and this one is on a main road.

Yes; it’s a very unique house. Beautiful period features I definitely would have kept, and the most incredible wraparound garden.

I do feel better knowing we wouldn’t have matched the accepted offer, so that how we played it didnt make a difference. But we know for next time to just offer full. And we have left things with the EA so that if it falls
through they can come back to us.

It’s been very revealing - now I know what it’s like to love a house and want to bid! And although I (not to sound dramatic) feel fairly devastated, I also know I am open to renovating etc, which I had not expected to be. And we are in no rush to move so hopefully something lovely does come up.

Husband not helping by saying we could have done the mortgage thing and matched/exceeded the offer but he doesn’t want to.