Renegotiating mistake

[istheresomethingwrongwithme]

Feel like a complete idiot so please don't flame me, just wondered what others thought of this situation.

Viewed a house a month before lockdown. Guide £435,000. Offered £375k, negotiated up to £400k which was our absolute maximum. We are procedable buyers so in a fairly strong position. House needs alot of work. There had been a few other viewers but they all needed to put their houses on the market etc.

Then coronavirus got serious and on the advice of our solicitor and surveyor, we asked whether there was the possibility of renegotiating due to the current climate and expected property/economic downturn. We suggested using our original offer of £375k.

This has completely backfired and the vendor now wants the full £435,000 despite everything that's going on.

When I write it down, it sounds like a really shitty thing to have done and I wish we'd never bothered. His reaction does seem extreme though. We were genuinely nervous about this and had considered pulling out altogether - not to be flakey buyers, but things have changed massively since our offer was accepted. I'm a SAHM and my husband runs his own business, so of course there are financial concerns as there are for many at the moment.

Fee really awful and deflated. Our solicitor said most of his sales were proceeding but at reduced prices, so his advice seemed reasonable. No way will we pay the £435k, so if he vendor has made up his mind on that we've lost it.

can I ask why you are so sure we should pull out?

The economy is about to take a huge hit, house prices are likely to drop as no one can afford to move, he clearly doesn't actually want to sell or at the least is now going to be difficult. Also, it simply doesn't seem like the right house - unless there is something absolutely marvellous about it and it's going to be your forever home. You said it needs doubling in size.

Yes we reduced our price post coronavirus due to so many resorts about the inevitable economic down turn and the effect this would have on property prices. We did already think that we had offered 'top money' for it considering it needs so much work, but we were happy worth that before all this uncertainty.

Walk away, everytime a property had fallen through for me its been a blessing in disguise. You just cant see it yet.

I agree with Soup pull out. The house sounds like it needs a hell of a lot of work, the vendor sounds unmotivated, you don’t know how much money your dh will actually get to do all this work and the economy is fucked. Don’t do it.

you should walk away. find a cheaper house. in the current uncertainty you shouldn't be going anywhere near the amount you considered "maximum" previously. don't go above £350k.

Thanks @SoupDragon and everyone else, this is helping me view this more logically.

It would have been a forever house but it was not without some fairly big compromises. It is in a beautiful setting, but on the outskirts of a town we currently live in which I don't really like. The house itself is an ugly block but we were going to change that with external cladding, the extension, new windows etc. So I suppose effectively, it was an expensive plot to a degree.

We have been looking for a long time, never found quite the right thing but this seemed a good opportunity to make a home for ourselves and I think we could have lived with the compromises.

That said, maybe it wasn't right for us after all, especially if it was going to stretch us financially.

Yes I probably can't see that this might be a blessing. It's probably because we don't know when more property will come to the market with all the uncertainty, when will estate agents open etc. so all I can see is us being stuck here for another few years.

@istheresomethingwrongwithme we’re in very much the same position, moved back to NI and bought a small fixer upper intending to have done up and flipped within 2 years, looks like we’ll be here for 3-4! Ah well, lucky to have a home and the skills to do it up!

I think you have been cheeky from start to finish with your offers.
Offering 60k under original asking price was cheeky and then despite a 35k reduction been agreed you found another way to find an excuse to try and go back to the 60k under.
I don't blame him for loosing patience with you.

So I suppose effectively, it was an expensive plot to a degree.

An expensive plot in the wrong location.

I don't think there's anything "cheeky" given no one has incurred any costs. Doing it just before exchange is "cheeky", doing It at the start of the process when a global pandemic is going to cause a lot of damage to the economy is not.

Meh, maybe he was cheeky wanting a lot more money than it was worth? Like they say, something is ultimately worth what someone is willing to pay for it. We could all just pluck high figures out of the air and call people cheeky for wanting to pay below them, and I say that as someone who’s moved around a lot thus had to buy and sell a lot. It is what it is.

Honestly, if the vendor had posted here he’d have been told to go back to the original price - it’s a fairly common response here when the buyers try to gazunder.

That said, I don’t think you’re being unreasonable either. But you seem to have loads of doubts, so take a few steps back and reassess the situation when it’s appropriate.

You have quite a few risk factors, a building and renovation project that you have yet to fully cost out, a cautious property market, your husband's income reliant largely on dividends while he is currently furloughed from work. I presume you have not already negotiated the refurbishment mortgage so therefore that is also uncertain. I would be jittery!!

I recently done the same thing, albeit with a better result. There was no way I would have been willing to continue at the original sale price. If the vendor really wanted to sell, he would have been open to a negotiation. I didn’t feel bad asking for a reduction and neither should you!

They actually initial refused, then can back a day later saying they’d accept! They must have been playing hard ball, or perhaps the reality of the situation hit them.

@istheresomethingwrongwithme This is a fairly common negotiating tactic. It's meant to make you panic and feel like you made a mistake negotiating. However, it only works when the buyer is either desperate or a pushover.

The market is definitely in your favour. Expect a 15 - 20% correction in the next 18 months.

Be firm, push back with £345k as your best and final and if it's not accepted, walk. I'm willing to bet they're going to struggle to find another buyer given the current market and the condition of the house.

I'm on the side of those who say walk. Just wait for a house which better suits your requirements. Bear in mind if we have repeated waves of CV, any building work could be very stop-start and therefore take much longer to complete.

Also if your Dh is mainly paid from dividends then you need distributable profits to pay these. Times are hard and the company may not declare a dividend at all. I'd just hunker down and wait TBH.

Unless you are completely sure that you want it at the price you agreed, I'd sit tight and see if the seller comes back with a compromise position.

Why buy a house on the outskirts of a town that you already know well and that you know you don't like?! This is so not the right house for you and also in the wrong location. It's just not meant to be and fate is giving you a guiding hand in walking away now.

OP, what do YOU want to do? You will have a feeling in your gut about which way you want to jump. It's tempting to ask for other opinions as a way of outsourcing the decision but none of us know what's going to happen in the medium to long term about the house market and economy.

When you think about offering your original amount, how does it make you feel? Expansive - scared but excited or does it make you feel dread?

Now, how does it feel when you think about withdrawing your offer? Relief? Sadness in the pit of your stomach? Regret?

You already hold the decision inside - ask yourself questions to bring your answers to the surface.

To make sure you won't regret your decision either way, you have to make sure that the answers on which way to jump come from you, not other people.

Thank you everyone for your wise words today. I was worried about starting this thread but it's really helped me put things into perspective.

The vendor has said that he wants to hold out for the £435,000, so we won't be going any further with it. The estate agent said he wants to sell but doesn't need to, so I get the impression that he has had a bit of a change of heart. It also appears that the property he was buying has fallen through, so that has taken away the pressure to sell as well. Our deviation from the agreed price has obviously sparked a decision, but I get the feeling we may have had hurdles later on anyway.

Feeling ok about it, I am disappointed to a degree but thanks to this thread I can see that the house wasn't perfect in a number of ways. As a pp said, we would be balancing quite a few risk factors in uncertain times.

Thank you all for your help

you can't blame the vendor and their intention, the reduction come from you.
you wanted to spend 250K+ that's your wish.
first, when you offered 400K what was the valuation, spot on? over/undervalued?
your reduction is based what future holds, could go both ways in term of value.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I was blaming the vendor. I've acknowledged throughout my thread that I was annoyed with ourselves for sparking a change. I've unintentionally drop fed a bit, we always felt as though he was reluctant and maybe that should have warned us off reducing, but were nervous because of the change in economic climate. A lot has changed since we first offered and whilst it is our 'fault' for changing our position, we might also have been naive to proceed regardless.

I suppose what I'm saying is, that's life and maybe it will all have worked out for the right reasons in the end. I just wanted to update the thread and thank other posters for helping me rationalise things.

I’m sorry but I’m on the vendors’ side. And yes it was cheeky, because you made him take the house off the market while you wasted his time (this is in response to some people saying it is not cheeky because costs had not been incurred yet). The vendor may already have incurred some costs anyway with solicitor’s time. It’s a shitty thing to do. You are now saying the vendor wasn’t serious, but it was you who came back on the price. I’m also saying this because you are the one that sounds reluctant from the beginning. You shouldn’t have put in an offer if you had the concerns you mention.

Have you posted about this before, OP? Because it sounds awfully familiar, if not there was someone else at the same price point that tried to reduce before exchange.