Ready to exchange and a much better property has come on the market for the same price

[curtainst]

The house I'm buying needs quite a bit of updating. Everything is decades old and shabby, although well maintained and serviceable. I'm happy with it and we're scheduled to go ahead. Lo and behold a new house comes on the market, the exact same house a hundred metres down the street, with everything updated and brand new. Kitchen, bathroom, flooring, ceilings, lighting, new doors and windows etc. At the same price. What do I do in this scenario? I feel like I'm being shortchanged by this. Should I go to estate agent and negotiate a reduction? Or is that considered unethical at this stage when everything's ready to go? Or do I drop out and go after the other? Or see if house 2 will accept my offer first (it's their asking price so I think they will!) and then break off with current seller? FTB here and very clueless.

Definitely do this. My Dsis had similar ish situation. She initially offered on flat 1 which was very lovely but over budget so put in cheeky offer. They declined. So viewed flat 2 and offered on that. Proceed towards exchange but then flat 1 people came back and said they'd accept the offer. So she pulled out out prior to exchange and went back to flat1. She's really happy and has a much nicer flat too for a great price.
Go view this house. Find out seller position (maybe they want quick sale?). If you love it then go for it.

Worth bearing in mind that this new street will be one where you will want to get along with neighbours... Whose first impression of you won't be great.

Also - your offer might not get accepted and then you have no house?

You’re FTB in a slow market. You hold all the cards.

Op i also came here to raise the possibility of a bidding war.

If you have spotted it as a good price in comparison to other houses for sale, then others may have done as well.

It can be quite common in my area for multiple offers to be made above asking price for the right house that doesn’t need work doing, and also for houses that need a lot of work to go unsold.

Your back gate point interesting as we don’t have a gate into our garden and i prefer it that way as i feel it is more secure.

Same. Exactly same house /footprint but a turnkey for the same price… makes me feel something is sneakily hiding behind all that fancy pants decor and the owners just thought cos the house up the road has gone at that price I’ll sell mine easily at the same price as everyone will think it’s a bargain yet it’s about to collapse

Not read all of the posts but we had a similar situation. We were close to exchange on our house and one came up down the road with a better finish and garden and a slightly bigger extension for the same price. We felt we were too far down the road with conveyancing and could do the property up to a higher standard and we built a garden room etc so we just ignored the new property on the market. Anyway I realised the people who did buy the new house were friends of mine and it turns out their neighbour is psychotic and has slashed their tyres etc, hence why the previous owners had sold for the ‘lower’ price.

I would advise caution. Whats the other houses history?

There was a house I viewed on a whim, it was just down the street and on real cheap with no photos online. It was the WORST house I had ever seen, should have been condemned. It was a hoarders house but the drains had collapsed under the house causing it to pull away from the neighboring house. It stunk of raw sewage and had horrific damp where water was pouring in through the party wall and structural cracks everywhere.

Its the only house I have ever viewed that I think was genuinely un-save-able. I had to shower afterward because the stench in the air stuck to my skin, Ive never felt 'dirty' viewing a house before.

Well, a developer bought it and did honestly the quickest flip I have ever seen in my life. He brought in a team and had it looking like a different house just in 1 weekend (if it wasn't for the fact I know its a bodge job I would be impressed at their speed).

They emptied it, plastered over the cracks, landscaping the over grown garden, new paint job (including painting the old windows and doors trendy dark grey), new flooring, a new off the shelf quick fit kitchen, the windows haven't been shut since they bought it to air it out... then they whacked it back on the market as a 'fully renovated' house with a £100k mark up on what they paid.

They have not fixed any of the actual issues though, they just hidden them and made it look fresh and pretty... some poor bugger thinks they are buying a turn key and is about to walk into an expensive nightmare.

If a house looks too good to be true it probably is.

Will the EA even allow you to view if you’re under contract with another house? Or is it a different one?

Yep, around the back end of 2024 and start of this year we offered on 3 houses that went to bidding wars.

It seemed to be a random 'bubble' of time this happened for as we had never encountered it in the year and a half before when we had been looking at houses.

Housing markets are fickle and things like that can happen out of nowhere. As oddly as the bidding wars started they then stopped again, it only last about 2 months. Also several 'bidding war' sales seemed to fall through and the houses go back on the market.

One we offered on got offered to us as we where the '2nd highest bidder' five months after we where rejected but we where just about to exchange on the house we finally managed to buy.

Go and see it and see what the chain situation is like, what property 2s sellers are like and their situation

If not proceedable and you prefer house 1 get a survey done and use the survey and price of property 2 on market as leverage in an email to estate agent saying you'd like to reduce offer in line with expected reno pricing at xxx, you'd be happy to meet in the middle at xxx in exchange for proceeding to completion asap or something

Why not it won't hurt to try, ignore estate agent totally. You're a FTB! and this shows other properties will come up even if house 1 won't budge and is unrealistic about pricing.

Trades cost SO MUCH nowadays and that's just for fitting and labour, the cost of actual reno/DIY is astronomical. I wouldn't bother anymore unless you had trades in the family.

It’s not about being a dick.

This is a huge investment and it’s appropriate to ensure you are paying a fair value.

On paper it looks like house 1 is potentially significantly overpriced - you could argue that’s a “dick move” from the seller and EA.

It’s absolutely reasonable to do due diligence in viewing the other house and then consider the situation in the round.

Whilst buying a house is about money I really believe that you need to go with your gut. From my limited experience I went with my gut and spent 15 happy years in my favourite house and it was completely a turn key property.

With the next one my gut was screaming at me but I had to move. I hated it and I was only there 17 months.

Do not believe anything the EA says. This is your choice. Until you've exchanged you are not tied to anything.

In the house buying process you have to do what is best for you, don’t worry about everyone else. If that means pulling out and buying the other house, then so be it.

A back gate is not necessarily a Good Thing - it's extra access for would be burglars, access that is perhaps out of sight from other properties...

A pp has made a good point op. Also get info on the neighbours.

Your last point about access to back garden would be a deal breaker for me. I definitely don’t want to trudge garden stuff through the house; nor a bicycle or building materials if I wanted a pond, a raised bed or even some fair sized shrubs. Same for getting rid of waste.

Access to back garden is useful for getting rid of garden waste, storing bins if you don't want them out front, bringing bikes round the back, if you have builders then they can move the materials via the access and not via the internal house, window cleaners don't need access to your house to get their stuff round the back. You can use it to take the dog round to hose it down before it gets in the house.The list goes on.

I have a gate to stop people getting round the back.

House buying and selling is a dirty business, but the bottom line is that it is a huge investment for you and you need to cover all bases and be sure you are getting what is best for you.

It is tough on the seller if you pull out but unfortunately this is not a situation in which you can afford to be sentimental or squeamish.

It’s literally how the whole system operates in Scotland.

Thanks for all the comments. I spoke to the EA of house 2 and they said there's been lots of offers over the weekend and he'll let me know if they're doing any more viewings. The house has only just come on the market! I don't know if it's just playing hard to get. So some of you may be right that they're trying to get a bidding war going. Or it could be that it's such a good price that people are jumping on it.

They are two different estate agents.

Why will their first impression of me not be great? None of the neighbours know me from Adam.

So you would miss out on a much better property at a lower price because you think it’s a ‘shitty’ thing to do? …..nothing in house buying is done lightly ….I’ve done it 5 times to date( bought houses that is) …..but I would pull out again if a better property ( imo) came on the market when I move again …..I’ve had someone pull out on me…..it happens….I swore…..I got upset…. Then I got over it…..the 2 times I did it , I lost money as I had had the surveys and searches done

Well it looks as if lots of other people thought it was very well priced. All you can do is wait to see if they come back to you or not. I hope it works out for the best either way.

We had lots of interest and had to go for best and final offers didn’t choose the top one for various reasons lost our buyers as we couldn’t find anything finally sold to new buyers and eventually found a house to buy. I think you have to be business like and make a head decision not a heart one.

How can it be a 'London thing' when there are rows upon rows upon rows of terraces up and down the country.

Signed, a Londoner who grew up in an end of terrace!!