Advice needed: Someone else’s offer accepted on the property we want

[HollieTalbut1997]

Hi, I’m hoping to get some advice as I’m really inexperienced at house buying/selling.
We’ve been considering moving for a while and a property recently came up that we were really interested in. We got the process moving for listing ours and viewed the property straight away. We offered on it but was declined because our home wasn’t yet on the market.
Our property is now on the market, but someone else has made an offer on the property we want in the meantime and it’s been accepted. I spoke to estate agents today and explained ours is now on the market and we want to remake our offer, also explained our budget was flexible and would be prepared to up our offer if needed. They said they’d pass it onto the buyer.
If an offer has been accepted but we offer more, or if we can sell our property quicker, could we still secure the property? To note, the other buyer also has a property to sell which has just gone to market.
Is this basically gonna be a case of who can sell quicker?
Any advice/experience welcomed!

It could be the other party are cash buyers, we were in this position (downsizing) and the seller went with us rather than the other party who needed a mortgage.

People accept/ refuse offers for many reasons. I might accept a good offer from someone not on the market but I would not stop the agent from marketing my home, I'd only do that once they were in a position to proceed.

Accepting offers from 2 people at the same time is known as a contract race. Solicitors are legally obliged to tell you if you are in that situation. It happened to us once, as inexperienced buyers and we were furious. If we'd found out sooner we'd have withdrawn. We made the agent suffer for it as much as we could. If it happened now I'd just withdraw.

Offering more now would be gazumping. It's a shitty thing to do. Market your home and if you are ready to proceed you can then go back, ask if the other prospective purchaser has sold and if not make an offer then. If they have sold then there will be another house along for you, dont be a dick. Personally I wouldnt consider an offer from you if my other buyer had sold, the house would then be off the market. Someone willing to offer in that situation is likely to be the sort to demand last minute price reductions.

But the other buyer may not need to sell to purchase, they could have an inheritance, significant savings or be in a better position as they have a substantial deposit which would enable them to blow your offer out of the water.

All you can do is sell yours and come back with your final offer when you're proceedable and see if they will reconsider.

I've sold a couple of houses recently and I think in both cases went with a slightly lower offer but a better prospect of a completed sale.

I would discount selling to you because you are willing to gazump and I'm ethical in my dealings with people.

We got into a compete to complete with any other buyer.

It is possible. In the end both of us buyers pulled out and house still on the market at 400k less as market seems to be crashing. So glad we pulled out!

@HollieTalbut1997

well, as others have said, they might not be counting on the sake of that property??

if I were you, I'd forget about it until you're under offer, just look around & see what's out there. Then once you're under offer you can inform the Agent and ask them to put the offer in if it hasn't sold or find another house ( usually one you like even more pops up)

gasping is not a very nice thing to do, but you can't really go back to them until you're under offer anyway.

goid luck with selling yours!!