Recently viewed a house and made an offer 3% under the listed price. We had a buyer at that point of making the offer, however they then suddenly pulled out the next day.
We have the same agent as the seller so they assured seller they would work fast to get us another offer.
The seller said they were keen on us, and might accept, but obviously wanted us to have another offer first before accepting our offer and this is absolutely fair enough - no beef here, we were not in the best position suddenly. We knew we could lose this property - however it has then sat on the market for another 2 weeks so we had hope….
Seller then changed their listing to ‘offers over only’ of the 3% under offer we made. The house next door came onto the market at the same price the next week.
(House 1 we made an offer on is cosmetically nicer than house 2, but fundamentally they are identical in build).
We now have another buyer offer back on the table so can get going, but seller apparently has had 2 viewings recently and is waiting for those viewers to put in an offer ‘next week’. If you wanted to make an offer, why would you wait a week?
I can’t find out why both houses went on the market at the same time, doesn’t seem to be anything obvious. I already live in the same area. Houses are newish, I don’t see any scaffolding or building works which suggests an issue. EA has not disclosed anything.
Am I right to think house 1 is playing a game of trying to get a bidding war going? If they don’t want to accept the lower offer they just need to say no, we would then know where we stand! Would you be put off by 2 next door neighbours selling up at the same time?