Feeling gutted, lost my dream house in spite of putting a higher bid

[Kk31]

My family and I have been looking for our dream house since a while now. In the last 10 days we found exactly the home we wanted. It was just perfect, ticked all our boxes. The kids loved it too (and believe me, they don’t take to houses very quickly) ...everything was looking bright and we put an offer. When the EA called, he said the owners had selected another family even though we had a higher bid, by a few pounds.. We were gutted, there was so much gloom thinking we’ve lost our dream house. But we thought if we liked it so much, we can put a higher offer, so we did that. And yet the owners, didn’t accept. I am feeling so depressed....I just can’t believe that in spite of offering a sizeable amount , in fact higher than the asking price, we still didn’t get the house....feeling horrible...

The buyers may be in a better position. We had an offer accepted a few years ago despite higher bids. There was no chain to muck things up.
Don’t worry about it. There will be other dream houses or houses that can be turned into your dream house.

Keep in touch with agent - almost a third of sales fall through. But keep looking and be sure you are in the best position to move forward when you do find another dream home.

I’m very sorry for you. It’s not a nice feeling. It may be that the other family are in a better position to move or fit with the owner’s timeline.
Anything can happen though so worth telling the agent your offer still stands (maybe the original one?) and to contact you if the sale falls through.

I lost my "dream house" 20 years ago.... we ended up somewhere else very nice but I still hankered after the original one a bit..... until a friend bought it from the people who had pipped us to the post a few years before. I now know how busy the road gets at certain times of the day, all the trouble she's had with horrible neighbours and how shoddily done some of those then swish interiors were, and feel glad it wasn't our destiny.

I suspect it was either a case of the successful bidder being in a better position (e.g. cash buyer) or there was something "personal" about them - members of the same tennis club, passionate about the seller's pride-and-joy garden or whatever.

Stay in touch though. Many house purchases are falling through.

The sellers maybe feel like, having accepted the other offer, it's the right thing to do to stick to their word and move forward with that offer instead of accept an increased counter offer from you.

I'm in Scotland so the process is slightly different. In demand properties tend to go to a closing date with blind bids with no chance to increase if you lose out. When I asked my solicitor about how much to offer, he said if you really love the house then go as much as you can afford and would be willing to pay rather than guess what others are offering and base your offer on that. Then if you lose out you know you couldn't have done more and that you couldn't afford it anyway. There's always the risk you'll go a lot higher than someone else but then you don't walk away thinking we could have paid more. You don't tend to find out what the winning bid actually was in Scotland so you'll never know if you've missed out by loads or just a bit until you check the land register months later.

Thanks for your kind words...the thing is we are chain free and we’re absolutely flexible on movement...it’s just so strange and unbelievable that a lower bid won it...but as Notanum said, it’s probably a cash bid or someone from the same community etc...I’ve informed the EA to contact us if it falls through, so fingers crossed.

@Kk31 did you ask the EA why not? It may be something as simple as they gave their word, that does happen.

You never know what your bad luck has saved you from x

@sbplanet yes, we did ask the EA. He said the owners are a bit old fashioned, so they agreed with the other quote even though it was a bit lesser than our first quote and much, much lesser than our revised one...
@Ballsballsballs76 that’s what we’ve been telling ourselves.. :(

We lost out on a house last year despite bidding higher than the people who got it. The house ticked so many more boxes than the one we ended up buying, as it was much more spacious with a nicer orientation. We lost out as we were in a chain and the person who owned it was trying to buy a house from someone who was tricky to deal with, so tried to put herself into the best position possible.
However, I have never found the sale record on sold prices on Rightmove, so I keep telling myself that the house must have fallen through, and we got lucky not to have had our offer accepted.

I remember this feeling! We lost out on a house after the EA advised the vendor to accept another offer the day before our second viewing!! He knew that we liked it. We were chain free, cash buyers and I think the EA wanted us to buy a different house as he knew our budget was quite a bit higher than that house was valued. I was really upset for about 4 weeks before finding our new house, which I love so much more than the first one. The EA actually came back to me about 6 weeks after to say that the chain had collapsed on the first one! Too late, as we’d moved on to another house with a different EA by then.

With hindsight, I’m really glad we didn’t buy the first house. I walk past it most days and the garden is quite a bit smaller and there’s only space for 2 cars on the drive and nowhere near for guests to park, which would have been a big problem. Also, we would have ended up moving again in 5 years for more space, whereas our new house could be our forever home.

Hope your new dream house comes up soon OP!

The estate agent may have pushed the other bid if that purchaser was also selling through them. That way they get the fee from the sale of both houses.

This happened to me a couple of years ago. We had met the other buyers, we'd chatted to them at a couple of open house viewings, and we were in a similar position (both of us had flats to sell, plus we already has a buyer lined up, I don't know about them).

Both parties put in offers, and there was a brief bidding war. The vendor chose the other buyers even though we were willing to go even higher. I could tell the ea was annoyed, as they were getting less commission.

I am still angry about it a couple of years on. The house we moved to is considerably smaller, but in a nice location. I would have preferred the bigger house.

My dsis found her dream house and the rumour was the estate agents the seller was using had put forward the other persons bid as they were selling through them so double fee. My BIL found the sellers telephone number in the phone book (yes it was THAT long ago) and called them. They agreed to sell it to Dsis and BIL and the sellers gave the estate agent a right earful.

Oohh yes, ask the estate agent in writing if they are selling the new buyer's house. I doubt there's anything you can do apart from speak to the owners direct.

@DianaT1969 - good idea, but if in writing or even over the phone, they would probably say they are not allowed to disclose such information because of data protection, GDPR rules etc. That in itself may be the giveaway, as they could also straight out say 'no' if it's not the case.

Put a letter through the door of the house, explain you understand that they've accepted the lower offer, however should the sale fall through you could see your family being very happy there and to please contact you either directly or through their agent if it did. Add you will not bother them again and thank them for their time. Some agents don't put all offers to the owner (have experience of the industry) and some owners are sentimental and need to be reassured the house is going to be loved. We got our house by writing a letter to the elderly owner, she appreciated knowing that a family would be moving in to her house she loved and also was worried about her neighbours. Don't talk face to face with the owner.

@DianaT1969 , @chocotrip, is this possible, can I talk to the sellers directly. They live abroad, but we have the LinkedIn connection. Won’t the EA get upset? Is it ethical?

I don't know. I wonder if you sign something when progressing with an EA that you won't go direct? Hopefully someone in the industry will be along.
If you don't plan on using that agent in the future I guess there can't be negative repurcussions.