Buyer pulled out - again

[alesl360]

Hello all

Looking for some advice/reassurance. For the second time in a month our buyer has withdrawn their offer on our house we are trying to sell

We put our house on the market at the end of July, we had a lot of interest and lots of viewings- maybe about 20 in 2 weeks.

We finally accepted an offer 3k above asking price and also put an offer in on a beautiful house that we absolutely love.

Our mortgage application was accepted and we were ready to proceed, until the buyer had to pull out as his mortgage application was declined. Appears as if he didn't have a permanent job and his contract had come to end. Frustrating that this wasn't flagged straight away but I guess there was no way of anyone knowing. He had an AIP and proof of funds.

We put the house back on the market and got a second offer within 4 days for the same price. The buyer told us that she would meet the previous offer price if we cancelled all viewings, which we did. She then began to drag her feet on sending through her documents to get the memorandum of sale sent through.

Today she emailed our estate agent to withdraw her offer with no explanation, she hasn't answered their calls either.

We are so devastated and now worried the vendor will put his house back on the market. He has no onward purchase but he will be moving into a retirement home so I don't think he is willing to wait too long. We were initially given 2 weeks to resell and we are now a few days off that.

Our house is now right at the bottom of search results on right move, and we aren't getting as many calls for viewings.

We're not really in a position to lower the price because we are dependant on a set sale price to pay off our debts and meet our lenders affordability criteria...

Has anyone been in this position and if so, how did things work out?
What can our estate agent do to move things along, they're saying they've tried everything. It all feels a bit hopeless now as time is no longer on our side..

Thanks for reading this

I'm guessing the agent has already contacted everyone who previously viewed the house to see if any are still interested?

Apart from lowering the price, I'm not sure what else you can do.

I'm sorry, it's a shit system.

I don’t think the EA can do much if you can’t reduce the price. Maybe you could tell the EA that you might be receptive to offers, then try to move any reduction in price up the chain.

On a more positive note, you obviously have a desirable house since on two occasions now it has sold quickly, quite impressive in this market.

All you can do is keep it pristine ready for viewings at short notice. The house you’re buying may take a while to sell even if they did put it back on the market.

Thanks so much both for your responses!
We have one viewing this evening so we're doing a big clean and keeping our fingers crossed..hopefully third time lucky 😅

Can you pay for a premium listing so that it bumps it up on Rightmove?

They added it as a premium listing after the first sale fell through...so it's still there as a premium listing this time as well..it doesn't seem to make much difference tbh, still pretty far down :(

Your EA needs to reduce the price by 2% or more, and then increase it again to the actual money you need. This gets it back into people's inboxes and at the top of the list. I think it's called price toggling.

They should be telling you this, not me.

@KievLoverTwo I called and asked, they said they don't do this :/

You are their client. If you are asking them to do it, they should do it.

Otherwise they had better magic you up some asking price offers.

I’d reduce the house by say £500 this will get the house to the top of the listings again.

Have I understood this correctly? The house only went back on the market at some point yesterday? If this is correct and you have already had two buyers within a short space of time, it seems that your chances of getting another offer are good. Serious buyers will be checking RM very regularly.

Our estate agent advised me to lower the price so the guide was less than we wanted to attract viewings and then people would bid up to what we wanted. I was so nervous of this as didn't want anywhere near the guide price they started it at but it worked and they did know what they were doing 😬!

That won’t do anything unless your house is for sale for 25k. Rightmove needs a minimum drop of 2% to put it back on the top/send it back to people’s inboxes.

We've had 2 buyers pull out. We lost the first house we wanted but the second house the vendors waited and we are hopefully exchanging in the next day or two. I know it feels hopeless but I hope its third time lucky for you too. Can you see if the EA will take a couple of new photos and pick a different cover photo?

This is a decent estate agent and how you get the best price for your house. Make it appealing to as many as possible to get multiple offers. This works best if your house is new to the market though, if you're now past the initial flurry of interest I'd say you'd be better to drop your price now so it's fresh again to people and hopefully you'll get competing offers. It all depends how much you want that house you've offered on and if you're prepared to lose it.

Agree with the other poster. Your agent was an unusual and good one.

Don’t you have to reduce by 2% to get it at th3 top of listing again?

I think being at the top of the listing is being given undue importance in this thread.

Yes it’s a nice thing to have as a seller but not vital. Serious buyers will scour Rightmove for suitable properties, they won’t only look at the first few listings. And there is nothing to suggest this house is overpriced so why reduce it?

Yes that's correct, the second buyer pulled out on Monday just gone (a week after making the offer) so it's only been 2 days. We had a viewing last night and they said they'd be interested in a second viewing which is positive, but not holding my breath! No other viewings requested so far..

This is actually what they did with us too when it first went on the market, they priced it about 5k under the valuation to attract as much footfall as possible, it seemed to work very well, though our offer was 2k under their valuation. They said to hold off on reducing it further after asking them..

I'm sorry this happened to you too but so pleased to hear you will be exchanging soon! This gives me hope too :)
Will see what they say about changing up some pics too..

This is a good point...when I was house hunting myself I used a variety of filters and sorted the results in multiple ways, just hope that the fact it's been on for more than a month doesn't have a negative impact..

Got it. You have a good chance of finding another buyer soon given that you did on the previous two occasions.

Thanks @rainingsnoring and everyone else for the reassurance! I really needed it

UPDATE!
We finally got an offer today at asking price! :) We held out on accepting as we also had a second viewing later in the day and they're likely to put an offer tomorrow too.
With this being our third buyer now, we're apprehensive about this falling through again. Worried that we might go with someone flakey (like our second buyer who ghosted us) or someone whose mortgage application gets rejected (like our first buyer).

I read somewhere that ensuring a buyer's AIP was provided by a broker rather than done online is a good indicator that they're proceedable..does anyone have any tips like this? I'm worried about flakiness really and I think we'll go for whoever seems most likely to proceed (if it's even possible to know) rather than who offers highest asking price ..

Edit: rather than the highest offer*