Help which offer should we take?

[HouseSellingDilemma]

I am selling my house on behalf of my father who has gone into care.

The house was on the market but after a while with advice from estate agents we lowered the price. We got an offer at £395,000. We are about 2 weeks of completion surveys have been done etc.

Now a viewer who saw the house at higher cost is in position to move. The chain is only him and a couple who need a mortgage to buy his house. The new offer is for £30,000 more.

Should we go for the safe sale now or risk the newer offer, hope there are no issues but be better off?

Must be a bargain if the originals could magic up another 30k in a few hours

It is an original property in the centre of a South East village. Most of the people looking at it were early retired people who were selling the large family house to downsize so seemed to have the money.

It has been hard to price according to the Estate Agents(!) hmm they have one job to do....

Another update (this has been a busy day) second buyer has now come back with a higher offer. BUT we are not being that arsey to get into a bidding war and will stick with the increased offer from original buyers.

Wow, I'm surprised they fully matched £30k more without you even asking for it!

Re the duty to get best value, that doesn't mean someone should keep dropping a buyer who is close to exchange for a higher bid which appears. It means that when listening to offers made at that stage, someone shouldn't just accept the first offer they receive. Under the duty to get best value, you are still free to consider aspects of an offer such as how proceedable it is (if you have a timescale to consider) and not purely the price itself. When selling for someone else, the person with power of attorney needs to consider their best interests which is a combination of highest price possible and most likely to come off in the timescale. People may out a time limit of viewings and offers of several weeks and then choose from any offers received, but they aren't then expected to dump that buyer 10 days from exchange if a better offer comes along at the last moment. That isn't what getting 'best value' involves.

However, Op has done extremely well here. I am really surprised at the full extra £30k, but well done for achieving it. It's clearly a sought after property!

@deRiguerMortis
Of course its greed. If a sale has been agreed upon by another party and they have instructed solicitors etc then to go with another higher offer that far on its greedy and a huge risk.
I put an offer in on a property and weeks down the line the same happened to me. The higher offer didn't happen their mortgage was refused. The seller came back to me asking if I wanted the property I told them to stuff it. Guess what that property is still on the market.

OP, that sounds the right approach. The 2nd offer people are clearly determined.
You can still say to them that should your sale with the current buyers fall through you will certainly let them know. That is the right thing to do and actually they won't be surprised you say that and in the longer term will know you showed integrity to turn them down. If for some reasons your current sale does fall through and you end up goi g with these other peoole, they will have reason to trust you as vendors, whereas if you throw over the current people, even after they've upped their offer by £30k just 2 weeks before exchange, you would look rather suspect as vendors.

It's a shame if these people saw it first but weren't proceedable......but that's how it goes. They've tried and now they'll have to accept defeat. It's just one of those things.

To get into a bidding war at this stage after the buyers have found an extra £30k would just be wrong.

@HouseSellingDilemma

Well we told the current buyer the situation, (did not mention to them that we would withdraw from the sale) they very quickly agreed to match the higher price. So we are proceeding with original buyer at higher price.

Interesting they came up by so much so quickly.

Years ago, we went sale agreed on a property only for the seller to gazump us very late on the process.

We matched the offer.

They gazumped us again.

We asked what price they wanted to completely close out any other buyers. We offered that. They were thrilled.

Then we eeked out the process until the very last minute and pulled out.

The house finally sold months later for under what we had originally offered.

Sure, I didn’t have the higher moral ground, but when you’ve been gazumped by someone, you know their word means nothing so why bother playing fair?

@VodselForDinner love your style

@VodselForDinner: I will remember your story ! Hope I’m never in that position

Care is paid for by the state if your dad runs out of money so this shouldn't influence your decision in the slightest.

Take the original offer, don't be that person.

[quote Alexalee]@VodselForDinner love your style[/quote]
Why thank you .

On a more recent purchase, we had the seller come back to us after we’d agreed the sale to look for more money based on a higher bid from someone who’d previously seen the property but wasn’t a position to finance it but then subsequently sold their house.

They asked if we’d up our offer to what the other bidder offered. We said no, we wouldn’t go any higher and walked away.

Got a call a few weeks later to say the other buyer had pulled out and would we proceed to purchase at the price we agreed. We said no.
They came back to say they’d take €5k less. We still said no.

I’ve bought and sold a few properties over the years and, in my experience, anyone who is willing to do that after a sale is agreed is just not worth dealing with. Ever. It tends to be just the start of them messing you around.

@VodselForDinner: its a detail, bIt 50k not 5k surely?

[quote DespairingHomeowner]@VodselForDinner: its a detail, bIt 50k not 5k surely?[/quote]
No, €5k.

@optimisticpessimist01 If only life were that simple. I can assure that my fathers needs will not be paid for by the government despite having dementia, unable to walk, feed himself or manage his own personal care.

We are happy with our decision and also wonder why the buyers wanted to knock us down £15,000 initially from the lower price when they are obviously very aware and able to pay the full market value. You could argue they were being greedy.