I went to see a house recently and had to put in an offer much quicker than I would have otherwise, due to the estate agent telling me on Monday morning that the place had already received an offer over the weekend after it was listed on Friday afternoon. The area is pretty (countryside) but very deprived and far away from main centres of work (I'm at the bottom of the ladder practically in terms of affordability). It surprised me that not only someone got a viewing on the weekend (when they are almost always fully booked on Saturday you're booking the same week). Instead of viewing the place once or twice again and scrutinising a bit more before making an offer, I went ahead and made an offer.
In the viewing I thought the place felt smaller than their advertised sq meters, but thought it might just be me. However, since then I've found out that the place is about 16% smaller on the EPC than advertised on Rightmove. I knows EPCs can be wrong at times, but I'm inclined to believe this one's accurate due to my experience of viewing houses of a similar size. I would look pass 2-3 meters, but this is 15 sq meters in a house that's already small.
I now feel like a mug because I made the offer (the exact asking price) partly on the listed square footage, and the estate agent is pressing me to move with the memorandum of sale. I asked them to explain the discrepancy, at which point they sounded a bit awkward and said that when they put properties on Rightmove it generates the sq footage based on nearby properties. I could understand if there was a much larger house nearby, but it's in a row of identical sized terraced houses....so I think that's a bit odd. They didn't apologise but in my view it is their responsibility as the estate agent to manage their own listings and display accurate information, and not inaccurate one which might mislead buyers.
I could renegotiate, but I don't want to be seen as someone who would deliberately gazunder a seller and risk the estate agent not being cooperative with viewings in future.
Any thoughts?