Should we accept the offer??

[LavenderLxx]

I’d like to pick your brains and see what you all think…

My brother and I are selling my late fathers house. It’s been on the market for 4 weeks at £800,000.

We’ve had 6 viewings and had the first offer a few days ago. The first offer was for £750,000 which we rejected. They have just come back with a second offer of £760,000.

They have sold their house and their buyer is in a rented place. My brother and I are in no mad rush to sell but the estate agent has said how slow the market currently is and how they’ve had some houses that have sat there for ages and then the price has had to be lowered to less than the original offers.

Just wondered if anyone had any words of wisdom? Should we push for a bit more? Hold out at £800,000? Accept their offer?!

I’d bite their hand off. Almost every property on the market in my village has had its asking price reduced and the market appears to be very slow moving.

Yep.
I'd have their hand off

Tbh your brother has put you in a position of weakness by debating their offer. He needs to be clear what he will & will not accept.

Also, these buyers sound a bit flakey (for you) if they’re offering on multiple properties.

Why flaky? They clearly want to find a property; they’d made an offer and heard nothing back. Of course they are making other offers if they see things they want.

I don't think the buyers sound at all flaky. They made an offer, increased it by 10k but the OP and her brother wanted even more so they said no and moved on to another option that they also liked. They sound like serious buyers, with a short chain in place.

The buyers could lose the sale on their own property if they waited around and didn’t look at other properties.

I’m sorry to hear this OP. Your brother messed up; it was always a risk that in holding out for more the buyers would be lost; several people on this thread warned it was a risk. It was a good offer and he shouldn’t have gambled it by counter offering. I really feel for you as you wanted to accept it and this is not your doing. Hopefully he learns his lesson and next time a decent offer comes in, he doesn’t mess about.

i really hope they come back to you 🤞🏽

I think the counter offering part was ok, that is a well used tactic and recommended by EAs as a better alternative to the straight No, we don't accept your offer.

The part that wasn't ok in my opinion, was that due to OPs brother's procrastination, they took too long to agree a deal. The whole thing needed to be wrapped up quickly once the buyers got close to an acceptable deal at 750k. They managed to extract another 10k out of them and that appears to be the limit of what they would pay for this house.

You have to recognise when it's time to stop negotiating and accept the best offer you have received.