Estate Agents not letting us put in an offer?

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Hi all. We have no experience with dealing with estate agents so I was hoping someone would be able to advise on the below!

We really want to put in an offer on a property. It’s listed on Rightmove (and has been for 5 weeks), and is a £900,000 house on a street full of £2m+ properties. The area is full of elderly people in average properties that are then typically snapped up by developers and resold for insane amounts.

I initially rang hoping to view the property after it has been on the market for 2 weeks. I was told that there are to be no more viewings as the seller has accepted an offer in principle, but was waiting for them to sell their own house. End of call.

I rang back a week later and asked about the house again as it was still on RightMove. I was told that it was still on Right Move as it hadn’t sold as the seller was waiting for the buyers own house to sell. I asked if I could view as I may want to put an offer in too and was told no as the buyer had accepted the sellers offer (then surely it should be taken off of Right Move?).

A couple of weeks on and the house is still available to view. I rang off of another number and was told the same story again.

Can anyone shed any light onto this? Surely if the sellers are waiting on the buyers to sell, then they may still be interested in receiving new (potentially higher) offers? I can’t help but think something dodgy is going on by the estate agents as the house is such a bargain in a very desirable area.

Do a Land registry search (£30 ish) and write to the owners direct.

Estate agents near me keep houses on rightmove up until completion. A house I was buying in March last year is still on there but I know it’s actually been ‘sold’ twice (sales fallen through) but is now sold again. It’s still there.

Estate agents usually have a friendly local developer who will jump in when they can on such a juicy property...meanwhile its being used to attract folk like yourselves. Im cynical but have seen this a lot locally. I actually managed to buy a repo as the developer wasnt quite ready....i live in knock it down and build two land. Im not sure its ethical to advertise what youre not prepared to let people view. Assoc of.....may be a place to query. You have nothing to lose.

The red flags to me are that it's £900k on a street of £2million houses, presumably needs some work and that there's a history of developers snapping similar properties up

I'd strongly suspect the EA's working with such a developer and that they'll split the profits - it happens all the time and I've experienced it myself when selling my late father's place (and they weren't very pleased to be caught out)

Yes. It is.

Tell EA you want to go for a ''bidding war'' - (whatever it is called). IE you try to out bid anyone else by submitting an offer in writing and other party/ies do the same- all by sealed bids and the highest offer ''wins''. However, if this is a deceased estate, the tax may be so high that the odd £50,000 may not make much difference.

Lots of properties stay on RM for ages after they’re sold, under offer etc.

Some agents actually only put the house on RM when it’s sold.

Indeed.

Highly doubt it! Seriously who cares and who would be that surprised that an estate agent doesn’t care about prospective buyers if they have a preferred buyer in mind. Non news really.

Do you live out of the area OP? I know our local agent does not entertain viewings from people that live far out of area in another county.

Being of a nasty cynical nature, and having had dealings with a very dodgy EA in the past, I’d guess that the EA has a mate or family member lined up for a relative bargain, and there will very likely be a brown envelope along the line. So of course he doesn’t want offers passed on to the vendors, especially if they’re elderly and perhaps naive/vulnerable, too.

Might add that I once met a developer* who told me quite openly that he had such ‘arrangements’ with more than one EA - he’d acquire the properties cheaply, do them up cheaply and sell on at a profit.
*not a friend, I hasten to add - I just happened to meet him a friend’s lunch party.

See below. So many houses are kept on RM just so you contact the agent.

Ah yes it’s all a conspiracy against OP!
JFC.

I would post a note through the door expressing your interest and asking if they are open to an offer. Hopefully they will come to the property and find it. You do hear stories of estate agents arranging a sale to their friend or colleague at lower than market price, particularly for these sort of properties where the seller has inherited a property and is not close to the property in question. It’s a “victimless” crime situation.

i think its suss too...sometimes i think where the EA is selling both properties/multiple properties in a chain they are incentivised to not let anyone else into the action. There has recently been a series on R4 on property/will /probate scams where a property has been sold for a suspiciously low price where an EA has been involved in the scam too.

People on here are ridiculous. The seller has agreed to sell it to someone. Estate agents keep it on RM to get people to call them. The end.

Put letter through the door even if no one lives there. You have nothing to lose

This is awful! Happened to my partner after his dad died and was very upsetting and creepy. Also, some sort of scam has now started with his deceased dad’s address so we strongly suspect these people - if they are innocent of the scam they may unfortunately be dragged in by the nature of their digging.

it’s just a blanket “accepted an offer but they need to sell”

If, as has been suggested in earlier posts, the EA intends to sell the property to a developer, then this response sounds very suspicious. What developer would need to sell a property before buying another one?

Why? Is it Royston Vasey?

But most estate agent contracts include an exclusive marketing period (usually 12 weeks). And that covers privately agreed sales. The sellers can’t just say “We got a letter through the door, so we’ve decided to sell privately”. They wouldn’t be able to do anything with the OP’s offer until the end of this period. Meanwhile a lot could have progressed with the existing offer.

A small one? Developers aren’t all huge cash-rich firms.

Mine was still showing as “for sale” on RM when we’d exchanged, completed and moved in. They never showed it as “under offer” or “sold SSTC”. Just “for sale”, and then “sold”.

In a slow market, estate agents want to make it look like they have lots of properties on offer.

The offer that has been made (whether from a family or a developer) has almost certainly been made conditional on there being no further viewings. Unless the offer was also conditional on the right move listing being deleted and the EA board taken down, there’s no benefit to the EA in doing those things.

As others have said, if the property is still going through the admin of probate then a chain might be preferable to the sellers than a cash buyer who would be in a hurry. Or they may have met the family and thought their deceased relative would have liked them. Or the offer may have been above the list price to “ compensate” for a chain.

No reason to assume EA shenanigans.

This is really normal though. It shows as for sale until there has been some significant progress after an offer has been accepted. Offer might fall through. At the moment it is in the limbo stage of offer accepted but not got as far as solicitor details being exchanged etc so it shows as still available.

It's really standard.