Asked to give a best final offer, is this common?

[Specksofwhiteallaround]

DH and I are first time buyers nd have just started looking and viewing homes in the past two weeks. We viewed a house that was asking £325k on Friday, the photos were a bit misleading and the house needs a lot of decorating (door frames were peeling, they’d plastered over what look like a couple of large holes in a couple of rooms and not painted over them, bit of damp in a cupboard and the stair carpet had been shredded by their cat, that sort of thing.), and it needs two new doors, a single plus french doors, plus some windows replacing. The house is very over priced, no other house on the street has gone for more than £280k and some were bigger and done up to a higher standard. We decided that it would suit our family but it wasn’t worth the asking price so offered £285 thinking that if they negotiated up to £300 that would be acceptable, we wouldn’t be upset if we didn’t get it.

We got a message from the agent the next day saying that they had passed on our offer but let us know that another offer had been made. Thirty minutes later we got another email saying that due to the interest they want us to give our best and last offer on the property by midday on Wednesday. I was a bit surprised by this, I had assumed if more than one offer was made they would decline or negotiate each offer, this sort of feels like they’re using the power of FOMO to get us to over offer on what it’s worth.

Is this a common thing for sellers/agents to do? Has anyone had any experience of this?

@DrySherry - agree with your comments - I was downsizing and ended up in the same market as FTB. I ended up in a couple of BAFO bidding wars - didnt get any of them as I was in a chain and 'chains' are not attractive if you are coming up against either a cash buyer or a FTB. I ended up breaking the chain and moving into a rental to get into a cash position.

When I got involved in the BAFO - I just offered what I thought it was worth. I can see people getting carried away as this is their 'dream home' - and offer over the odds. Problem is if end up on a down valuation after the bank valuation.

Definitely not increasing our offer over what it’s worth. I don’t begrudge the seller trying to get the best price but it does seem rather manipulative, the second email was really emphasising the interest in the property, almost implying that it was so desirable that we would really need to pull out all the stops to secure it.
The agent also refused to let us view it until we’d proven we could afford it and were serious buyers and were giving the impression we were lucky to be viewing it from the start which is another reason I was taken aback by how run down parts of it were and how quickly the woman showing us around was to point out the dodgy bits.

I fully get it in that situation, I didn’t expect it when both offers were under the asking I guess. I thought in that situation the seller would just decline and wait for better. After only two weeks on the market I’m not convinced the seller will actually accept either offer unless someone gets serious fomo and offers the asking price.

Which may of course be very low. They want to pressure less experienced buyers, this is partly why house prices have been inflated over the years.

Best and final is a win win for them as it's not really final is it. They can decline any offer. I think they're trying it on.

Usually, when an offer is made, it is on the condition that the house is removed from the market. That helps to prevent this sort of scenario.

I would go back to the agent and say my offer stands, I will not be increasing it but if the property is not taken off the market I withdraw my offer.

The flipside of this is my friends who were trapped for months on end across the summer, having accepted an offer that didn't ultimately go anywhere.

I'd have no issue with best and final offer. If you don't think the house is worth more than your offer, move on.

If anyone was interested in the outcome, we offered 290k. Someone in the estate agents office rang to say the seller wouldn’t be considering any offers under 315k. They also said being honest with us, neither offer came close to this and they were aware of the gap between what the seller is asking and what people are offering. Can’t help feeling this was rather a waste of our time as they could have just told us what they were hoping to get at the outset and we would have made clear we’d never be offering that.

They declined our offer in the end, but we did find it a bit off that in the small print it specified that even if they accepted one of the offers they would be continuing to market the property.

Sounds as though the sellers are being unrealistic and ignoring the EAs advice. If neither offer was anywhere near their target price then maybe they will see sense and either spend a bit of effort making the property more marketable and attractive or reducing their expectations. They seem a bit daft anyway to put in a good kitchen and ignore all the other issues hoping no one will notice.

Looks like it wasn't meant to be then OP. Keep looking and you never know, they might even come back to you after they've thought about it.

That just happened to my DD. Her offer was rejected so she walked away and within a week they were on the phone saying they would accept her offer if she was still interested.

Yeah the sellers are just trying it on.

I will be interested to see if they get the amount they want and how long they end up waiting. Two more properties have been reduced today and a house that is smaller but in better condition a couple of streets away has been listed for 240k so hopefully we’ll find something else soon enough.
Just wish they would have outlined their expectations when we made the first offer and saved poor DH the hours it took to get his bank to give him the bank statements they wanted. He has tight deadlines for work this week and really could have done without losing that time trying to get his bank to sort it out.

I wouldn't be sending any bank details unless my offer was accepted. There is no need to check every offer they get.

They wanted everything, all the details of our mortgage in principle, dh's payslips, bank statements etc. Never having been in this situation before we didn’t question it.

Thanks for update. You never know in a few weeks time they could come back to you and accept your offer. Fingers x something better will come along,

Yes, it sounds like they’re just being unrealistic at the moment.

Let them stew and see if they come back to you (if you do still want the house, but bear in mind that this also gives you some thinking space), and also keep looking in the meantime.

It's not normal to do that unless your offer has been accepted. If it turns out that there is any problem with your finances it goes back on the market. But they cannot expect to collect financial information from everyone who puts an offer in.

Normal process is this is my offer on the condition that any booked viewings are cancelled and the property is removed from the market. Yes offer is accepted, property removed from marketing, please forward your financial details, solicitor details, MIP, etc. Offer not accepted, no further action required. Even if they are still considering your offer, as long as it hasn't been accepted, no action required from you.

I'm really sorry they wasted your time. It sounds as if the EA realise, as you do, that the house is not worth what is being asked. Live and learn!

In future when you make an offer explain that it comes with a time limit to it.

Thanks for this, we’ve never bought before so when people said best final offers was normal we assumed this was just how it is. It did feel like a lot of hoops to jump through on our end for them to essentially say but we’re going to keep looking for a better offer even if we take yours, never mind that the price seems unrealistic.

I think they underestimated the interest to be fair, neither offer was anywhere near to what they’d take so I’d have thought it pretty unlikely one of us was suddenly going to offer another 20k on top to secure it.

This is important - mortgage surveys tend to reach a conservative price as they value at what they definitely think they could get for it in a distressed sale. If you over offer, the mortgage company may not agree to lend you the money after the survey/valuation for the property anyway so you’d be wasting both your time (and the money on the survey). I really would only offer what you have genuinely been advised it is currently worth and refuse to budge.

We had two mortgage valuations last year (second was a top up for equity release); the second was nearly 10% lower than the first one because the market was less certain and they were more risk averse. Still gave us what we needed in terms of equity release, but multiple valuations by different EAs since have confirmed the original valuation - the mortgage provider, however, doesn’t care. They’re sticking with the conservative valuation.

To be fair, I think what these sellers are doing is really not normal. When you ask for best and final you end up accepting one of the best and final offers, you don’t keep looking. They are being really weird about this and their estate agent should be advising them better.

We sold two houses a few years ago and I have to admit, the house that went to B&F was the easiest transaction by far.

1-Week of viewings, everyone then had 3-days to submit B&F offers and we then chose our preferred buyer from those.
All were proceedable (alrhough some were in a better position than others) and we eventually went with the 3rd highest offer (with the caveat that any attempt to renegotiate at a later date would result in the house immediately being remarketed).

A few B&F offers were below the asking price but the vast majority were above as that was the market at the time.

I just thought it was unnecessary since it had only been on the market two weeks, I thought they’d just turn down the offer and wait for one closer to what they wanted. If they hadn’t done two viewings back to back they wouldn’t have received two offers at once and would have had to deal with both of us individually after all.
Looking back we probably should have seen it coming, the estate agent kept checking her watch so we started heading towards the door thinking time was up but she didn’t follow and kept us talking in the kitchen about the local area etc, then abruptly hustled us out the front door where it turned out the other viewers were sat in their car waiting. She was obviously keeping us there long enough for the second viewers to see us leaving.