Rejecting an offer

[NotApplePie]

Our house has been on the market just over a week. We have had one viewing and one offer. They started low at 6% under then came back with 3% under. We were hoping to get a bit nearer our asking price at this early stage plus the buyer hasn’t even got their house on the market yet.

We have rejected their offer but now I’m panicking in case that’s the only offer we receive.

How early did you get an offer on your property and how much lower than your asking price did you accept for?

That's the right thing to do OP - how can they possibly put in a realistic offer if their place isn't even on the market?!

Thank you. Was starting to doubt our decision!

Personally I might have suggested that you would consider the offer - but not until they have a firm buyer in place. 3% under asking is a pretty strong number in current climate, but obviously pretty meaningless as the potential buyers current position is not yet marketed.

You definitely did the right thing, you can always give feedback to them via your agent that they're welcome to bring their offer back to the table when they're proceedable.

I wouldn’t reject 3% under asking in this market IF they had sold their own property.

As they haven’t, I would reject any offer from them as yours needs to stay on the market.

I wouldn’t have rejected their offer at this point.

I’d have told them to come back with that offer once they had an offer on their property.

That would have bought you at least 3-4 weeks to see if you get any more viewers and offers.

If their house isn't even on the market, they are in no position to be making an offer. People that do that really aggravate me!

Never, never, never accept an offer from someone doing that - even if it's twice your asking price. They are wasting your time. Tell them to come back when they are actually serious buyers.

We accepted an offer from the first person who viewed our house in February (we had other viewings but no other offers) for 5% under, negotiated up by the EA from 8% under. We had found the house we wanted to buy, we could make the numbers work and we would have kicked ourselves if we didn’t get any further offers and lost out on the house we wanted to buy. We thought we’d regret that more than we’d regret selling for a little less.

I think you need to leave this on the table and talk again if they become proceedable.

I’d have said a tentative “yes”, but explained that I wouldn’t take it off the market until theirs was sold.

Although the problem with this strategy is that an estate agent who errs on the side of laziness may not make much effort to set up viewings once an offer is on the table for the property. You’d need to trust them to keep pushing on.

A good agent I suppose would offer to take on and market their property aggressively to get the chain going (assuming their property is in your town, or the agency has a branch in the buyers’ town).

3% under after a week is good I think.

Most estate agents now won't allow viewings by people who are not able to proceed, or at the very least have their property on the market.