Gazumping. Should we do it?

[Itsrainingten]

We viewed a house about 6 weeks ago. Loved it. Had a second viewing and wanted to make an offer. Spoke to seller, explaining we were awaiting an offer on our house first but we had someone who had seen it 3 times and was apparently "just waiting for her husband to return from his business trip on Friday" and then would offer on ours. Well unsurprisingly she then went radio silence. I was in touch with sellers EA regularly letting them know we wanted it but still weren't in a proceedable (?) position. Even put forward a full asking price offer if they'd hold on for us. They didn't want to wait. Fair enough. Well this morning I looked on RM and it says it's SSTC. It wasn't on Friday. Thing is we've literally (like 2 hours ago) accepted an offer on ours so now we ARE proceedable. We are considering getting in touch and offering them £750k - asking price was £735. What do you think? Is this too immoral? Would you do it?

This. Reiterate you are keen, you are prepared to offer X, and if the current sale falls through to please ring you straight away.

I'm currently sitting in my south facing garden of a house we lost out on at first - same day we sold it was marked SSTC. But their sale fell through a few months later and we had our offer accepted. These things happen.

But the buying/selling process depends heavily on trust and goodwill, so to start that relationship with a bit of a cutthroat attitude doesn't bode well.

Good luck with finding your next home.

I'd do it.

Every man for themselves and all that.

Remember, if you're buying with a mortgage...it may not be feasible to offer way more than the house is worth

I think it will be fine from a mortgage perspective. We will just be potting our current one and making up the difference with savings. So we'll owe about 100k on a £750k house. Can't see the bank quibbling, even if they valued it at £700

I’d offer. If you hadn’t re-checked Right Move you wouldn’t have known it’s SSTC. I wouldn’t let on that I had seen.

It's a bit shitty, but doing it the week after they offered is very different to the day before they exchange. If it's your dream home you'll forget about it soon. If there are other good ones around and you just need to wait a bit I may be inclined to.

If it's just gone under offer I would. If it's been a while and the other buyers have spent money on searches etc I wouldn't

Speak to the EA and sound them out

This is the appropriate thing to do.

What about if you have a survey and discover things that will cost money to put right. Are you then going to lower your offer?
It's going to put you in an awkward position.

Is it worth that extra 15k over the asking price which is a fair whack over - I know you think the bank won’t have an issue but it’ll overpaying on house unless you love it…

Nope. Don't think so. If there was rising damp, subsidence or Japanese knotweed we'd probably pull out. Pretty much everything else I think we'd suck up. I couldn't handle flooding either but I've done a flood area map and it's very low risk so not worried about that

The selling / buying system in England and Wales is brutal. Gazumping is one of those things that happens and nobody is stopping you from doing it.

If I was a seller I would be very tempted to take a 25k higher offer and that would be my business.

(The buyers I sold to turned out to be a complete nightmare so had I been given the opportunity again, I would definitely have accepted a higher offer and left them to swing.)

To us, yes it is. It'd be our house for the next 20 years or so I imagine.

I would put the offer in. They knew you were keen/wanted to offer, so it won't come as a surprise. If you don't, you'll always wonder what might have been.

The one key thing to bear in mind is that if the sellers accept it, then you know how the land lies (ie - they might accept another offer from someone else). But you've got nothing to lose by submitting your offer. I'd do it with an accompanying email reminding the EA that you've been keen all along and only now are proceedable, and whatever you put on the table is the final amount you'd be prepared to pay for it (so there's no messing around after that). You don't know what they have already accepted, so there's the potential that your offer might be lower than what's accepted, but if you don't try, you won't know.

When we sold our house someone tried to gazump our buyers but we turned the offer down.

I personally find it concerning that someone would do this and would have the added worry of the new buyers pulling something else down the line. Additionally, they may even try to reduce it back to the original price close to completion.

These concerns are some of the reasons I don't think it's a good idea to accept an offer on someone willing to gazump. The added stress would not be appealing at all.

Personally, I think it is morally wrong!

As someone who had an offer accepted on a house on Fri eve, I can assure you that I spent all of Saturday and Sunday planning and all of today on email to mortgage advisors, the EA, our solicitor and looking at council tax rates and the exact age of the house for the mortgage. I would be incredibly annoyed at you if you then tried to gazump and would tell anyone trying to gazump our buyers where to shove their offer. Find another house.

We got gazumped by £50k over asking price. We ended up agreeing to match it but I was livid. The other couple ended up buying the house opposite which needed loads of work, and did it up. She made a joke to me about it so I knew it was definitely them. I’m now reminded of that £50K every time I look at her. Totally unrelated, but her DH is in prison now for drug dealing. No wonder they had so much cash to throw around. TBH, I don’t blame the vendors at all, but it is a shithouse trick.

Just imagine it was the other way round OP, you were the guys who managed to snap it up at the end of last week/over the weekend, you'd found your dream house and pounced on it. And then someone who'd looked at it weeks ago but wasn't proceedable at the time jumps back in...

does it still feel like a reasonable thing to do?

You don’t know that the buyers weren’t also waiting for weeks to sell theirs and put and offer in.

Honestly it doesn't really seem.that bad to me. Obviously if be pissed off but it's not like they're just about to exchange.

It's up to you but the seller could do the same to you as to the original buyer.

So if they're equally unethical you take your chances

@Itsrainingten get in touch with the agents immediately and register your interest should the other offer fall through. Quite a high percentage of sales fall through so all is not lost..

I would a hundred percent do it. It literally just went under offer. It's anyone's game and no one will have spent any money yet. Don't do it any later though as that is shitty but at this stage I would say it's still on the table and there is room for negotiation.

You lost the house. You didn’t have dibs on it. If you did the seller would have waited for you.

Keep an eye on it and let the EA know you’d like to put an offer in if the sale falls through. Otherwise get on with finding another house.

Karma’ll bite you on the arse if you do this.

Not a chance I'd do that. I'm into karma and I think you'd create a bad luck house but I'm probably on my own in that thinking