Buyer pulled out, should I reduce price?

[Crocamoc]

My house sold at the beginning of March for full asking price to FTB’s. They then pulled out 11 weeks later, the day before exchange 🫠. I’ve been back on the market 2 weeks but there’s been no interest - my house is a 1930’s 3 bed semi in a rural location for 350,000 which in this area would be mainly FTB territory, but understandably a lot of people don’t want to invest in buying property at the moment. The estate agents are all convinced they can sell it quickly, but they always say that! I need to sell quickly to try and save my onward purchase, new school places for kids etc so I’m thinking about knocking 15% off the asking price which would be the absolute lowest I could go and still afford the new house, and would mean shelving some of the renovations I want to do. Has anyone had any luck renegotiating an onward purchase due to change of circumstance? I don’t want to annoy the vendors because they are very patiently waiting for me to find a new buyer, and the stress of all this is driving me mad.

The market is dropping.
Reduce 10% and reduce your onward offer 10%.

Did your buyers pull out because they were worried about money? How about offering THEM 10% off? That should at least stop them being twitchy about negative equity.

Sorry they did that to you 😡

I offered the buyers £10,000 off but they said no. I think they just got cold feet - they sent my estate agent a text less than 24 hours before we were due to exchange 😭😭😭

That’s only 3% though. Reading the media, prices are on the slide.
Tell your vendor you have to reduce 10%, so say 40k, and they’ll need to drop 40k also to keep you as a buyer.

Agree with the above. We were able to upsize during the financial turmoil of 2008 by dropping our expectations on price dramatically on the house we were selling and by negotiating hard and securing a significant discount on the house we were buying. Overall, the discount offered to my buyers was offset by the discount on the house we bought.

I would talk to your agents and look at what local prices are looking like. Going to your lowest straightest off isn't giving yourself any wiggle room.

Make your agents work for their commission and get on their case- what are they going to do to get people through the door and make it stand out? Are they working their lists? Is it a featured house on Rightmove with a description sating it's unexpectedly available? Have they updated photos now it's Summer?

I would leave yourself some wiggle room to account for the fact that even at a reduced price people might try to negotiate you down in this market. Don’t panic too much, because if they dropped you, your onward purchase also need to sell at a difficult time which might not be so easy to do. However, in principle what you suggest should be the quickest route to securing another sale.

Thanks everyone. I phone my agent daily (sure he’s sick of me) for the first couple of weeks I was such a mess I just cried, but I think now I need a plan of action. He has retaken the outside shots for summer but they’re all pretty up to date anyway as it initially sold in 5 days in March. He hasn’t changed the listing to say it’s unexpectedly available or put it as a featured listing so I’ll suggest all of that on Monday. The trouble is a lot of sellers aren’t catching up to the fact the market is dropping and are wedded to the covid sales prices. I’m happy to drop to reflect the current market, but I’m going to struggle to do that unless everyone else is happy to do the same thing!!

You sound realistic and very reasonable. As you say, other sellers are very unrealistic. They are likely to regret these in a year or so.
Can you get back to the buyers who pulled out and offer them a discount of between 10-15% and try to negotiate with your sellers? It would be worth attempting this in order to achieve your move which is obviously important to you.